Months passed away--months of dreary, monotonous despondency, through
which ran a vein of anxiety that banished peace. During all this time
matters went on pretty much as they had done before, with one exception,
I held no further intercourse with Mr. Basil Bainrothe. Claude was
absent most of this time on business, for a firm with which he had
lately connected himself, and on the few occasions of his presence at
Monfort Hall treated me with marked formality.
Evelyn had affected to make light of Mr. Bainrothe's outrage toward me,
though far from defending him. "Men of his years do these things
sometimes," she said, "under the mask of playfulness and fatherly
feeling, and, however unpleasant it may be to bear them, one has to pass
them over. You are right, of course, to be reserved with him henceforth,
Miriam. By-the-by, dear child, your prudery is excessive, I fear, and it
makes a young girl, especially if she is not beautiful, so ridiculous!
But, of course, that even is far better than the opposite extreme. Now,
I flatter myself, I know how to steer the _juste milieu_, always so
desirable."
"But, Evelyn," I had rejoined, "his manner was atrocious! I could not--I
would not if I could--give you any idea of its _animality_; yes, that is
the very word! it makes my blood creep to think of it, even!"
And I hid my face in my hands, crimson as it was from the
retrospection.
"Then don't think of it at all. That will be the best way, decidedly,"
she had said, tapping me playfully with her fan, then whispering: "This
lover of yours may be useful to us, you know; let us not goad him to
rebellion. You can be as cool as you please, Miriam, but be civil all
the same."
I surveyed her with flashing eyes. "Such advice," I retorted, "falls but
poorly from your lips, Evelyn Erle, whom my mistaken father dubbed
'propriety personified.' One woman should feel for another's wounded
delicacy, even if a stranger; but, when it comes to sisters, O Evelyn!"
"And such insolence falls very absurdly from you, Miriam Monfort, under
the circumstances. Sisters, indeed!" she sneered. "It was a claim you
repudiated once!" and, with a sweeping bow, she left me, to repeat
"sisters, indeed!" in my bitter solitude.
What were these circumstances to which she so haughtily referred? With
my heavy head resting on my weary hands, I sat and contemplated
them--ay, looked them fully in the face! Outwardly, matters stood just
as they had ever done.
The same circle of servants--of acquaintances--revolved around us. The
house was unchanged, the living identically the same, even to the one
bottle of fine wine per day, carefully withdrawn from the cobwebbed
cellar by Morton, and as carefully decanted for our table.
But this alone, of all the viands set before us, was furnished at my
expense. My own small hoard of silverpieces had, it is true, from the
time of our ruin, more than sufficed for my absolute wants and Mabel's,
confined, as they were, to mere externals of necessary dress; but all
other outlay, even to the payment of Mabel's masters (I taught her
chiefly myself, however), was met by Evelyn.
We, the children of a proud man, were dependent on strangers. Look upon
it as I would, the revolting fact stared me out of countenance. Charity,
the chambermaid, had more right to lift an opposing front to Evelyn than
I had; for she earned the bread she ate, while I--there was no use
concealing the mortifying truth any longer--served the apprenticeship of
pauperdom!
True, the house was legally mine--the furniture I used, the plate I was
served from, the carriage I occasionally drove out in, were all my own
possessions--though, with a slow and moth-like process, I was gradually
consuming these. For, at my majority, it was my determination to pay for
my support in the intervening years, even if I sacrificed every thing in
order to wipe out obligations. Ay, the very corn my horses were eating
(what mockery to keep them at all!) was now furnished by another, and
must eventually be paid for, with interest.
Then, how would it fare with me, beggared indeed? I would take time by
the forelock; I would begin at once.
"Evelyn," I had said, not long after the conversation reverted to, "is
there no way in which my property may be fixed, so as to leave the
principal untouched, and still yield an income sufficient for my
support, and that of Mabel? The bread of dependence is very bitter to
me."
"I ate it long," she said, "and found it passing sweet. You are only
receiving back the payment for an old debt, Miriam. Your father's lavish
generosity can never be repaid, even to his children, by me, who was so
long its happy recipient."
The words seemed unanswerable at the time, inconsistent as they were
with her past reproaches. Again she said--when the same murmur left my
lips upon a later occasion--looking at me sorrowfully as she spoke, and
with something incomprehensible to me in her expression that affected me
strangely: "Wait until you are of age, Miriam: all can be arranged
definitely then; but now, the waves might as well chafe against the
rocks that bind them in their bed, as you against your condition;"
adding with a tragic look and tone, half playful, of course, "Votre
sort, c'est moi. You remember what Louis XIV. said, 'L'État, c'est moi;'
now be pacified, I implore you--all will still be well," and she patted
my shoulder kindly, and kissed my forehead.
Her forbearance touched me; but the time came when all this was thrown
aside. It was the old fable again of the bee and the bee-moth. Having
failed in her first efforts, she was now very gradually gluing me
against the hive.
Evelyn, as I have said, had always been at the head of my father's house
and mine, and, by his will, was still to remain so until my marriage, or
majority--one, usually, in the eyes of the law, in most respects. So it
pained me infinitely less than it must have done had a different order
of things ever existed, to see her supreme at Monfort Hall, and to feel
that every thing emanated from her hand.
Of all the servants, old Morton alone seemed to feel the difference.
Mrs. Austin had always openly preferred Evelyn to me, and Mabel to
either--so that matters worked very well between those three. For,
though I do not think Evelyn loved Mabel, nor Mabel Evelyn, yet, with
this link between them of servile affection, they managed very well,
without much feeling on either side.
Mrs. Austin certainly spoiled Mabel, yet she only rendered her
self-indulged, not selfish--for this difference arises out of
temperament and disposition--and no mother could have been more tender
or vigilant of her comfort or welfare, than was this ancient and
attached nurse and servitor. I mention this here, for it reconciled me
later, somewhat, to an inevitable separation, that must have been else
thrice bitter. But the culmination approaches!
I was lying, one evening, on a deep velvet couch in the library, now
rarely used except for business purposes--for, again, fires and lights
sparkled, in their respective seasons, in the several receiving-rooms of
Monfort Hall, maintained by Evelyn's bounty--when, overpowered by the
influence of the hour, and the weariness of my own unprofitable
thoughts, and perhaps the dreary play of Racine's that I was reading, I
dropped asleep.
The sofa was placed in a deep embrasure, surrounded with sweeping
curtains, for the convenience of reading in a reclining posture, by the
light of the window, and quite shut away, by such means, from the
remainder of the room.
To-night, a chilly one in August, very unusual for that season, the
window was down, and the drawn curtains kept off the light of the dim
lamp that swung from the centre of the apartment immediately above the
octagon centre-table.
I was roused to full consciousness by the sound of voices, which I had
heard indistinctly mingling with my dreams for some time before.
Mr. Bainrothe and Evelyn were conversing or discussing some subject,
somewhat angrily.
"You had the lion's share," I heard him say; "you have no reason to
complain. The rest came in afterward, and was all merged in that
sinking ship, and went down with it into the deep waters. It would not
have been as much as you received, had it been saved, which it was not."
"That is not my concern," she rejoined, dryly; "but for my
communication, Miriam would have secured all next morning. She was bent
upon it. You ought never to forget this."
"Nor do I; but, after all, you are the chief beneficiary, Evelyn."
"And your son--do you count his welfare as nothing? Will he not share
with me? Nay, was it not for his sake, chiefly, I warned you, knowing
how implacable else you might be toward us both, and how 'gold would
gild every thing' in your estimation."
"True, true; but still something is due to me. Undertake this
office--succeed--and command me, eternally. I love that girl, as you
know, as Claude could never love any one, and it will go hard with me if
I do not still inspire her with somewhat of the same sentiment--that is,
with your coincidence."
"Never, never!" she exclaimed with asperity; "her hatred is too
implacable--the Judaic principle is too firmly grafted in her life.
Truly, she is one of a stiff-necked generation. Her heart is especially
hard toward you, Basil Bainrothe--and, I confess, you were precipitate."
"I know, I know--but that error can be repaired. I did not think of
marriage _then_, I confess; after her bankruptcy and scorn to me, things
had not gone so far; her own severity has made me consider the subject
seriously. She is not one to be treated lightly, Evelyn!"
"Your son found that out to his cost!" was the bitter rejoinder, and I
heard her draw in her breath hard between her closed teeth, with the
hissing sound so familiar to me, and peculiar to her when she labored
under excitement--a sound like that of a roused serpent.
"Yes, to his cost; but there is no question of that now. Though, I must
say, I think he erred. He, like the base Judean, cast away a pearl
richer than all his tribe!"
"Thank you!" was Evelyn's curt, ungracious reply.
I rose from the couch, my hand was on the curtain; painful as it was to
me, I would go forth and confront them both with the acknowledgment of
their conspiracy, their fraud. I would not again listen to bitter truths
as I had done before, involuntarily, when bound hand and foot by the
weakness of my condition. I was strong and courageous now. I had no
excuse for hearing another syllable--I would defy them, utterly!
All this passed like a flash through my mind.
On what slight pivots our fate turns sometimes! How small are the
guiding-points of destiny! A momentary entanglement of my bracelet, with
one of the tassels of the curtain, delayed me an instant, inevitably, in
my impulsive endeavor to extricate myself from its meshes, and what I
then heard, determined me to remain where I was, at any cost to my own
sense of pride and honor.
Fear, abject fear, obtained complete ascendency over every sense, and
personal safety became my sole consideration. I, who had boasted so
lately of my courage, felt the cold dew of cowardice bathe my brow, its
tremor shake my frame.
They were plotting--deliberately plotting, as the price of secrecy on
one part--to shut me up in a lunatic asylum until my consent could be
obtained to that ill-starred marriage!
"Every thing is favorable to this undertaking," I heard Mr. Bainrothe
say; "her own moody and excitable condition of late--the absence of her
physician (meddlesome people, those conscientious medical men sometimes
prove, even when not asked for an opinion!)--Mrs. Austin's testimony as
to those lethargies, which would be conclusive of itself--our own
disinterestedness, so fully proved by our devotion to her and Mabel,
under difficulties--her mother's mysterious malady--all these things
will make it easy to carry out this plan in which your cheerful
coincidence, and perhaps Claude's even, will be essential."
"I doubt whether you succeed in gaining him over," she remarked, coldly;
"and, as to me, I shall act as you desire, perhaps, but any thing but
'cheerfully,' I assure you. I consider it a mighty price to pay for--"
she hesitated.
"A fortune and a husband?" he queried. "Claude has his suspicions, I
well know, but they rest on me alone so far. Could he be convinced of
your part in distracting Miriam's gold from its legitimate channel,
believe me, he would turn his back on you forever! I know the man."
"Yet he saw me--he must have seen me--alter that word in the codocil to
my aunt's legacy--asking no explanation at the time, receiving none
thereafter."
"That was different; he thought it a piece of vainglory on your part
alone, amounting to nothing, if, indeed, he observed it at all. No, no,
Evelyn Erle! if you expect to carry out your views, you must aid me in
executing mine. I shall keep your secret from my son on no other
conditions. We are confederates or nothing in this matter, you see."
"And suppose, in return, I publish yours to the world," she suggested,
coolly; "brand you with baseness? What then, Basil Bainrothe--what
then?"
"You dare not!" was the prompt reply. "I hold written propositions of
yours on the subject--you have not a scratch of a pen of mine to show. I
should declare simply that you were a frustrated rogue, that is all. Who
could prove otherwise?" He laughed in his derisive way. There was a
bitter pause.
"What is it you want me to do?" she asked, hoarsely, at its expiration.
"State definitely what you exact from me in return for your
forbearance--your _honorable_ secrecy?" There was exquisite irony in her
tone.
"Simply this," he said, calmly, taking no notice of her emphasis--"you
are to accompany Miriam to the asylum and act as her nurse and guardian
until my point is gained. You shall be present at every interview, and
you shall both be made perfectly comfortable--treated like ladies; in
short, every propriety shall be sacredly observed, and, on the day on
which her marriage with me is solemnized, you may both return to Monfort
Hall--you as its head, and Claude as its master; Miriam will go home
with me, her husband, of course, and all will be settled. Now, I give
you twenty-four hours wherein to consider this proposition. At the end
of that time, if you still hesitate, Claude shall know every thing. You
can then take your chances with him--he may be ready to take a felon for
a wife, for aught I know, after all!"
"Come, then, to-morrow evening," she acceded, after a second pause, and
in low, angry accents, "and I will acquaint you with my
determination--my necessity rather." They parted thus and there.