A NIGHT'S VIGIL.
They had been sitting through all the night, examining everything.
Catherine was not a woman to be the slave of passion, even when that was
the one delusion of her life. She got over it with a stern and fierce
struggle before they reached the gate of the Grange, whither Hester
followed her, trembling and half stupefied, unable either to resist or
to think of any course of action for herself. Catherine paused at the
gate, and looked round her with a curious quivering smile. "Here is
where I saw him going away," she said; "here is where I heard the last
words from him." She laughed; her heart was throbbing with the wildest
suffering. She dashed her hands together with a violence of which she
was unaware. "Such words!" she cried. It was scarcely one o'clock, but
in summer there is little night, and already the air had begun to whiten
with some premonition of day. She held up her face to the sky--an old
face, with so many lines in it, suddenly smitten as with a death-blow.
Her eyes, under the curve of pain, which makes the eyelids quiver,
looked up to the pale skies with what is the last appeal of humanity.
For why?--for why?--an honest life, an honourable career, a soul that
had shrunk from no labour or pain, a hand that never had been closed to
human distress--and repaid with misery at the end! Is there no reason in
it when God's creature lifts a face of anguish to His throne, and asks
why? She paused on the threshold of her house, which was desolate, and
made that mute appeal. It was beyond all words or crying, as it was
beyond all reply. The other, who was the companion of her misfortune,
stood beside her, looking, not at heaven, but at her. Hester had got far
beyond thinking of her own share in it. Fatigue and excitement had
brought sensation almost to an end. She was not angry with Catherine,
who had thrown her off. Everything was blurred to her in a sense of
calamity common and universal, of which Catherine seemed the sign and
emblem. She made no interruption in the silence. And it was only when
Catherine turned to go in that she was recalled to a recollection of
Hester by her side.
"I think--I had better go home--to my mother," the girl said, looking
along the road with a dreamy terror. She was afraid of the dark, the
solitude, the distance--and yet what was there left to her but to go
home, which she seemed to have quitted, to have fled from, with the idea
of never returning, years ago. Catherine put out her hand and grasped
her. She was far the more vigorous of the two. She could have carried
the girl into the house, where she now half led, half dragged her. They
found Harry already waiting for them in great bewilderment and distress.
He could not account for the entrance of these two together, or for
their apparent union--but Catherine gave him no explanation. She made
him sit down and tell her at once everything he knew of the state of
affairs: and when this was made plain to her, she flew out upon him with
a wrath that made Harry shrink.
"Why did you leave everything in one person's hands? Is it not a
partner's business to look after his own interests? You have piled all
upon one man's shoulders. He has had everything to do. It has been too
much for his mind--it has turned his head. If it had been yours, what
would have happened to you?"
"I have been saying all that to myself, Aunt Catherine," Harry said,
humbly; "but you know I am not clever, and poor Ned----"
She stamped her foot on the floor. "Let me have none of your
commiserations," she cried. "There is nothing poor about it at least."
She put Hester down at the table with pen and ink to write for her. She
had not said a word of compassion to her; this had been the way she had
chosen to express her feeling, whatever it was. When Harry had
interposed, begging to be allowed to do it, she had stopped him
summarily; and had gone on thus, collecting information, dictating to
Hester, examining papers with Harry, asking a hundred questions, till
morning was blue in the skies. When she saw by that strange light
stealing in, how wan and wretched her two companions looked, Catherine
rose from her chair. She was not tired--her colour was as fresh and her
eyes as bright as ever, her mind full of impatient energy; but the
powers of the others had flagged.
"Go home and rest," she said to Harry. "Have old Rule there to-morrow
morning to meet me. I will come to the bank to-morrow--I mean to-day--at
eight, before you open. Go home and go to bed."
"Not if I can be of any use to you, Aunt Catherine--or to poor Ned."
Her foot made the same impatient movement upon the carpet. "You can be
of no use," she said, "dropping asleep as you are: go and rest; at your
age few can do without sleep. And Hester, go too, you can do no more."
It was not without a half contempt that she saw the overpowering of
their young faculties by that which to her was nothing. There are so
many things in which youth has the best of it, that age has a right to
its dolorous triumph when that comes. She went down with Harry to the
door to let him out, glad of the movement, and stood in the early light
for a moment breathing in the fresh air. The birds were all twittering,
making their morning thanksgiving, expressing their joy in the new day.
Catherine looked out sternly upon the light and gladness in which she
had no share. She thought again--should she ever think of anything
else?--of the last words she had heard, and of his figure hurrying away
in the darkness, deaf to her cry. It was a relief to go in again, even
to see the poor little lamp flickering, and the light bursting in at
every crevice of the ineffectual shutters. When she reached the room in
which they had been at work, Hester, who had answered as far as her
faculties could to every call upon her, had dropped back into the great
chair in which she had been sitting, and had fallen asleep in utter
exhaustion. It was a curious scene. The windows were all closed, and
candles upon the table still burning: but the light swept in from above,
over the top of the shutters, which were not so high as the glass, and
lighted up the room in a strange abstract way like a studio or a prison.
In the midst of this pale and colourless illumination Hester's white
face, with the blue veins showing in it, in an attitude of utter
abandonment and exhaustion, pillowed upon the dark cushions of the
chair, was the central point; her hand with the pen in it was still on
the table, the candles flickering with a yellow uncertain blaze.
Catherine went and stood by her for a moment and looked at her. Tears
were upon the girl's long eyelashes, her mouth seemed still quivering,
the faint sound of a sob came out of her sleep. She looked younger even
than she was, like a child that had cried itself asleep. Catherine
looked at her with many a thought. John Vernon's daughter, who had all
but ruined her father's house, and had wounded her own pride, if not her
heart, in the way women feel most--and bitterer still, Edward's love,
she, for whom he had planned to betray her own better claims, for whom
he would have deserted her, for whom he had ruined her, this time
perhaps without remedy. With a strange bitterness she looked at the
young creature thus fatally connected with all the miseries of her life.
It was not Hester's fault. The table was covered with proofs of her
submission and obedience. If it was true that but for her perhaps
Catherine's power would never have been disturbed, it was also true that
but for her Catherine might have been ruined irretrievably, she and all
she prized most. But this argument did not tell in the mind of the woman
who stood gazing at her, so much as the look of utter infantile
weariness, the broken sound of the sleeping sob, the glitter upon her
eyelashes. She stood for a long time, and Hester never moved. Then she
took a shawl and covered the sleeper as tenderly as her mother could
have done it, and began to pace softly up and down in that weird
clearness. She did not even extinguish the candles, but left them there
amid all the disarray of the table, the scattered papers, covered with
notes and figures. The young can sleep, but not the old. The romantic
interest would be with Hester worn out with wretchedness and weariness;
but the heavier burden was her own.
Perhaps had the truth been pursued to its depths it gave a certain
satisfaction to Catherine to find herself at last left to contemplate
alone that uttermost and profoundest loss which was hers. The girl slept
though her heart might be broken; the woman whose last hope he was,
whose faith in human nature was wound up in him, who believed in Edward,
but on earth in no one else, slept not, rested not, could not forget.
She walked from end to end of the room, her hands clasped, her face in
all its comely age paled in a moment to the pallor of an old woman.
People had said that her colour was like a girl's still: her eye was not
dim nor her natural force abated. But over her there had come this chill
in a moment. And where was he, the cause of it all? Flying fast across
the country somewhere, directing his way, no doubt, to some port where
he could get out of England. For what, oh Heaven, for what? Was there
any sacrifice she would not have made for him? He might have had his
Hester, his own house like the others, if that was what he wanted. There
was nothing, nothing she would have grudged him! She would have asked no
gratitude, made no conditions. He should have had his freedom, and his
love--whatever he wanted. All this swept through her mind as she went to
and fro in that blue clearness of the morning which swept down upon her
from the skies over all the weariness and disarray of the night.
Catherine did not ask herself what she would have said, all things being
well, if she had been asked to consent to the effacing of herself, which
now it seemed would have been so easy a solution of the problem. It
seemed to her now that in love she would have granted all he could ask
for, and in pride she certainly would have done it, scorning to ask how
he could resign her so easily. Love and pride combined wrung her heart
between them now. Up and down, up and down with a soft monotonous motion
she walked unsubdued while the others sank. Her old frame felt no
weariness, her old heart was yet high. She could no more sink down and
acknowledge herself beaten, than she could drop her head and sleep like
Hester. With impatience and an energy unbroken she waited for the day.
Catherine's carriage stood outside the bank at eight o'clock in the
morning, to the wonder yet admiration of the town. "Old as she is, she's
an example to the young ones," the people said: though there were darker
rumours, too, that one of the young men had gone wrong, and that it was
a sharp and speedy inquiry into this that had brought Catherine into the
town without delay. The still closed door was opened to her by Harry,
who was pale with his sleepless night and with the anxiety from which he
could now find no escape. Behind Harry was old Rule, who came forward
with a face like a mute at a funeral, his hands held up, his countenance
distorted with grief and sympathy. "Oh, my dear lady!" he cried; "oh,
Miss Catherine, has it come to this? Who could suppose that you and I
should meet together a second time in this way?"
Catherine made a sudden gesture of impatience. "How do you know what the
way is until you hear?" she said. She sat down at the table where she
had sat so often. Her old look of command, the energy and life of old,
seemed in her face; if it was paled and jaded, the others, who were more
shaken still than she, had no eyes to see it. The three were deep in
their work before the clerks appeared, one by one, all those who were of
any weight in the place, or cared for Vernon's, asking anxiously if
anything was known of Mr. Edward. When they were met by the astonishing
statement "Miss Vernon is here," the announcement was received in
different ways, but with great excitement. "Then all is right," said
one; but another shook his head. "All must be very wrong," he said, "or
Catherine Vernon would not be here." It was the cashier who uttered
these words. He was an old servant of the bank, and had been a junior at
the time when old Rule was head clerk and Catherine the soul of
everything. After a while he was sent for into the mysterious room
towards which the attention of every one was now directed. There old Mr.
Merridew was shown in with solemnity on his brows, and various others of
the fathers of the town. Even outside there seemed a little excitement
about to the anxious spectators within. If it had been market-day there
might have been a run on the bank. As it was, there were one or two
little groups about, anxiously noting the grave faces of the visitors.
All day long they came and went; the great books were all spread about
upon the table within, and when the door opened sometimes one anxious
face would be seen, sometimes another. One of the younger men passing
the door saw Catherine herself explaining and urging something upon the
chief of the Bank of England in Redborough, who had joined the conclave.
It was clearly then, they all felt, a matter of life and death. Some
wine and biscuits were taken in in the middle of the day, but no one
went away for luncheon, no one had time or leisure for any such thought.
Mr. Pounceby, who was Catherine's solicitor, stayed by her all day long,
while the others went and came. The clerks, when their day's work was
done, left this secret conclave still sitting. The cashier and the head
clerk were detained after the others. The younger men went away with an
alarmed sense that Vernon's might never open again.
And this impression was so far justified that the councillors, almost
without exception, thought so too. There had been found in Edward's room
at the Grange a bundle of papers, securities taken by him from the safe
at the bank. The greater part had been abstracted, but the few that were
left showed too clearly what methods he had adopted. The bank itself was
worth aiding. Its prestige as yet was scarcely touched; but how were
these deficiencies to be made up, how was it to be worked without money,
and how was its credit to be restored? Catherine had not now the
independent fortune which on the former occasion she had thrown into the
common stock with proud confidence in Vernon's. It had all been repaid
her, but it had remained in the business, and if Vernon's now were to be
made an end of, was gone. That did not affect the mind of the proud old
woman. She thought nothing of herself or her fortune. She sat unwearied,
meeting one man after another, who a week or two ago had been obsequious
to her, without wincing, ready to hear all their doubts, to bear the
shakings of their heads, their blame of the culpable negligence that had
left everything in one man's hand--their denunciations of Edward, the
eager advantage they took of that right to find fault and reproach which
is put into the hands of every man who is asked to help. Catherine
faltered at first, when she found that to save Edward's character, to
smooth away his guilt, and make excuses for him was impossible. These
angry men would not hear a word of apology. He was a swindler to them
and nothing more. "Pardon me, my dear Miss Vernon, but I always thought
the confidence you showed in that young fellow excessive." "He should
not have been permitted a tithe of the power he had. It was not just to
others who were far more deserving." "If you mean me, I was no more to
be matched with Edward than a tortoise is with a hare," said Harry.
Catherine put out her hand to him under the table and gave his hand such
a pressure, delicate as hers was, as almost made the strong young fellow
cry out; but at the same time she silenced him with a look, and bore it
all. She bore everything--the long hours of contention, of explanation,
of censure, of excuse, of anxious pointing out again and again of the
strong points in her case. She argued it all out with every individual,
and again with every combination of them, when two or three together
would return to the old objections, the difficulties they had originally
started, and which again and again had been argued away, with no doubt
the natural special pleading of all who speak in their own defence.
During this continually repeated process Harry would stand behind her
with his face of trouble, watching the countenances of the speakers, now
and then blurting out something (the reverse of judicious in most
cases), shuffling with uneasy feet upon the floor; sometimes, poor
fellow, there being nothing else in his power, holding her elbow with
the idea of supporting her, kneeling down to put her footstool straight;
while old Mr. Rule, sitting at a little distance, equally anxious,
equally eager, not of importance enough to speak, would come in with a
quavering "Miss Vernon explained all that, sir--" "As Miss Vernon has
already said, sir----"
She alone showed little anxiety and no distress. She was as dignified as
if she had been entertaining them at her table, as she had done so
often. She bore those repetitions of the old objections with composure.
She did not get impatient, twisting and turning in her chair like Mr.
Rule, or crushing her impatience under foot like Harry. She was like an
Indian at the stake: or rather like a prime minister in his place in
Parliament. The hundred times repeated argument, the old doubt brought
up again, all afresh with shakings of the head, the stolid little
compliments to her as a woman so much superior to her sex, her masculine
understanding (good lack! wonderful, though not equal to those whom she
had convinced over and over again, yet who began again next moment where
they had left off), all this she put up with without shrinking. Oh, the
dulness of them, the unconvinceableness, the opaque vision, the impotent
hearts! But she made no sign that she perceived. She sat still and held
her own. She had the best of the argument in logic, but not, alas, in
power. Ten mortal hours had struck by the time the last of her visitors
hastened away to his dinner, promising to think of it, yet shaking his
head. Catherine leant her head upon the back of her high chair and
closed her eyes; the tears came to them in the relief of having no more
to say. She was so pallid and so worn now that they both rushed to her
in silent terror. She opened her eyes with an astonished look. "I hope
you do not think I am going to faint; I never faint," she said.
Ten hours! She walked to her carriage with a foot lighter and firmer
than that of Harry, upon whose fine physique and troubled soul this day
had wrought more havoc than the severest football. She would not allow
her old friend and servant to come to the door with her.
"Don't tire yourself," she said. "You have so much to do for us yet. I
think we shall pull through."
"God bless you, Miss Catherine," said the old man; "if we pull through
it will be your doing."
"What merit is that?" she said quickly. "Why should God bless me for
that? It is for myself."
"Oh, my dear lady," cried the old clerk. "I know you better than you do
yourself. It is for Vernon's and not for you. And Vernon's means the
honest living of many a family. It means----"
"Don't tell me what it means," she cried, putting up her hands. "It
means downfall and shame now. It means a broken heart, Mr. Rule."
"No, no," he cried. "No, no, we'll get through. I'll come back if you'll
let me, and Mr. Harry will work like a hero."
She gave Harry a strange glance. There was in it a gleam of repugnance,
an air of asking pardon. She could not endure the contrast which it was
not possible to refrain from making. He, standing by her, so dutiful, so
kind, while the other who had ruined her, fled away. She could have
struck him with her nervous hand, which now was trembling; she could
have made a humble confession to him of the injuries she had done him in
her heart. She could bear the old town dignitaries, the men of money,
better than this.
"May I go with you?" he said, supporting her with his arm, bending over
her with his fair countenance full of trouble and sympathy.
She could have struck him for being so good and true. Why was he true,
and the other-- Better, better if they had both been alike, both
traitors, and left her to bear it by herself.
"No, Harry," she said; "no, Harry, let me be alone."
He kissed her hand, poor boy, with a piteous look, and she felt it wet
with a tear. Nor did she misunderstand him. She knew it was for her he
was sorry. She knew even that he was the one alone who would stand up
for the absent, and excuse him and pity him. All this she knew, and it
was intolerable to her, and yet the best and sweetest thing that was in
her lot.