THE CASTAWAY.
Cosmo Bertram was at a very low ebb. No horse. Had moved off to
Batignolles. Had not been asked to the Embassy for a twelvemonth. When
he ventured into the Tuileries gardens in the afternoon, it somehow
happened that the backs of the ladies' chairs were mostly turned towards
him. He was still dapper in appearance; but a close observer could see a
difference. Management was perceptible in his dress. He had no watch;
but the diamond remained on his finger--for the present; and yet society
had nothing seriously compromising to say against him. It was rumoured
that he had seen the interior of Clichy twice. So had Sir Ronald, who
was now the darling of the Faubourg; but then, note the difference. Sir
Ronald had re-issued with plenty of money--or credit, which to society
is the same thing; while poor Bertram had stolen down the hill by back
streets to Batignolles, where he had found a cheap nest, and whence he
trudged to his old haunts with a foolish notion that people would
believe his story about a flying visit to England, and accept his
translation to Batignolles as a sanitary precaution strongly recommended
by his physician. If society be not yet civilized enough to imitate the
savages, who kill the old members of the community, it has studied the
philosophy of the storks in Jutland, who get rid of their ailing, feeble
brother storks, at the fall of the year. Bertram was a bird to be pecked
to pieces, and driven away from the prosperous community, being no
longer prosperous.
First among the sharp peckers was Miss Tayleure, who always had her
suspicions of Captain Bertram, although she was too good-natured to say
anything. The seasons had circled three or four times since she had had
the honour of being introduced to the gentleman, and yet the lady was
waiting to see what the improved facilities for travel might bring her
in the matrimonial line. She had, her dearest friends said, almost made
up her mind to marry into commerce.
"Poor Tayleure!" one of the attachés said, at the Café Anglais, over his
Marennes oysters, after the opera; "doomed to pig-iron, I'm afraid. Must
do it. Can't carry on much longer. Another skein of false hair this
season, by Jove."
In a society so charmingly constituted, the blows are dealt with an
impartial hand; and it is so mercifully arranged, that he who is
doubling his fist seldom feels the blow that is falling upon his own
back. It was a belief which consoled the poor Baronet's orphan through
her dreary time at the boarding-house--that, at least, she was free from
damaging comment. Her noble head was many inches out of water; the
conviction gave her superb confidence when she had to pass an opinion
on her neighbour.
Two old friends of Cosmo Bertram are lounging in the garden of the
Imperial Club.
"Hasn't old Tayleure got her knife into Bertram! Poor dear boy. It's all
up with him. Great pity. Was a capital fellow."
"Don't you know the secret? The old girl had designs on Bertram when he
first turned up; and the Daker affair cast her plot to the winds. Mrs.
Daker, you remember, was at old Tayleure's place--Rue d'Angoulême!"
"A pretty business that was. But who the deuce was Daker?"
"Bad egg."
The threads of this story lay in a tangle--in Paris, in Boulogne, and in
Kent! I never laboured hard to unravel them; but time took up the work,
and I was patient. Also, I was far away from its scenes, and only passed
through them at intervals--generally at express speed. It so happened,
however, that I was at hand when the crisis and the close came.
Mrs. Daker was living in a handsome apartment when I called upon her on
the morrow of the ball. She wept passionately when she saw me. She
said--"I could have sunk to the earth when I saw you with Bertram--of
all men in the world." I could get no answers to my questions save that
she had heard no tidings of her husband, and that she had never had the
courage to write to her father. Plentiful tears and prayers that I would
forget her; and never, under any temptation, let her people, should I
come across them, know her assumed name, or her whereabouts. I pressed
as far as I could, but she shut her heart upon me, and hurried me away,
imploring me never to return, nor to speak about her to Cosmo Bertram.
"He will never talk about me," she added, with something like scorn, and
something very like disgust.
I left Paris an hour or two after this interview; and when I next met
Bertram--at Baden, I think, in the following autumn--great as my
curiosity was, I respected Mrs. Baker's wish. He never touched upon the
subject; and, since I could not speak, and my suspicions affected him in
a most painful manner, I did not throw myself in his way, nor give him
an opportunity of following me up. Besides, he was in a very noisy,
reckless set, and was, I could perceive before I had talked to him ten
minutes, on the way to the utter bad. When I remembered our conversation
about Daker, his light, airy, unconcerned manner, and the consummate
deceit which effectually conveyed to me the idea that he had never heard
the name of Daker, I was inclined to turn upon him, and let him know I
was not altogether in the dark. Again, at the ball, he had carried off
the introduction to Mrs. Trefoil with masterly coolness, making me a
second time his dupe. Had we met much we should have quarrelled
desperately; for I recollected the innocent English face I had first
seen on the Boulogne boat, and the unhappy woman who had implored me
not to speak her name to him. The days follow one another and have no
resemblance, says the proverb. I passed away from Baden, and Bertram
passed out of my mind. I had not seen him again when I spent those
eventful few days at Boulogne with Hanger.
Another year had gone, and I had often thought over the death scene of
Daker, and Sharp's trudges about Paris in search of his niece. I could
not help him, for I was homeward bound at the time, and shortly
afterwards was despatched to St. Petersburg. But I gave him letters.
There was one hope that lingered in the gloom of this miserable story;
perhaps Mrs. Daker had won the love of some honest man, and, emancipated
by Daker's deceit and death, might yet spend some happy days. And then
the figure of Cosmo Bertram would rise before me--and I knew he was not
the man to atone a fault or sin by a sacrifice.
I was in Paris again at the end of 1866. I heard nothing, save that
Sharp had returned home, having tried in vain to find the child to whom
he had been a father since the death of his brother. He had identified
her as Mrs. Trefoil; he had discovered that shame had come upon her and
him; and he had made out the nature of the relations between his niece
and Captain Cosmo Bertram. But Captain Bertram was not in Paris; Mrs.
Trefoil had disappeared and left no sign. So many exciting stories float
about Paris in the course of a season, that such an event as the
appearance of a Kentish farmer in search of Mrs. Daker, afterwards Mrs.
Trefoil, and the connexion of Captain Bertram with her name, is food for
a few days only. This is a very quiet humdrum story, when it is compared
with the dramas of society, provincial and Parisian, which the _Gazette
des Tribunaux_ is constantly presenting to its readers.
When I reached Paris it was forgotten. Miss Tayleure had moved off to
Tours--for economy some said; to break new ground, according to others.
There had been diplomatic changes. The English society had received
many accessions, and suffered many secessions. I went to my old haunts
and found new faces. I was met with a burst of passionate tears by Lucy
Rowe, end honest Jane, the servant. Mrs. Rowe was lying, with all her
secrets and plots, in Père Lachaise--to the grief, among others, of the
Reverend Horace Mohun, who would hardly be comforted by Lucy's handsome
continuance of the buttered toast and first look at the _Times_. Lucy,
bright and good Lucy, had become queen and mistress of the
boarding-house--albeit she had not a thimbleful of the blood of the
Whytes of Battersea in her veins. But of the Rue Millevoye presently.
I came upon Bertram by accident by the Montmartre cemetery, whither I
had been with a friend to look at a new-made grave. As I have observed,
Bertram had reached a very low ebb. He avoided his old thoroughfares. He
had discovered that all the backs of the Tuileries chairs were towards
him. Miss Tayleure had had her revenge before she left. He had heard
that "the fellows were sorry for him," and that they were not anxious to
see him. The very waiters in his café knew that evil had befallen him,
and were less respectful than of old. No very damaging tales, as I have
said, were told against him; but it was made evident to him that Paris
society had had enough of him for the present, and that his comfortable
plan would be to move off.
Cosmo Bertram had moved off accordingly; and when I met him at
Montmartre he had not been heard of for many months. I should have
pushed on, but he would not let me. A man in misfortune disarms your
resentment. When the friend who has been always bright and manly with
you, approaches with a humble manner, and his eyes say to you, while he
speaks, "Now is not the time to be hard," you give in. I parted with my
fellow-mourner, and joined Bertram, saying coldly--"We have not met,
Bertram, for many months--it seems years. What has happened?"
The man's manner was completely changed. He talked to me with the cowed
manner of a conscious inferior. He was abashed; as changed in voice and
expression as in general effect.
"Ruin--nothing more," he answered me.
"Baden--Homburg, I suppose?"
"No; tomfoolery of every kind. I'm quite broken. That friend of yours
didn't recognise me, did he?"
"Had never seen you before, I'm quite sure."
I took him into a quiet café and ordered breakfast. His face and voice
recalled to me all the Daker story; and I felt that I was touching
another link in it. He avoided my eye. He grasped the bottle greedily,
and took a deep draught. The wine warmed him, and loosed "the jesses of
his tongue." He had a long tale to tell about himself! He disburdened
his breast about Clichy; of all the phases of his decline from the
fashionable man in the Bois to the shabby skulker in the _banlieue_, he
had something to say. He had been everybody's victim. The world had been
against him. Friends had proved themselves ungrateful, and foes had
acted meanly. Nobody could imagine half his sufferings. While he dwelt
on himself with all the volubility and wearying detail of a wholly
selfish man, I was eager to catch the least clue to a history that
interested me much more deeply than his; and in which I had good reason
to suspect he had not borne an honourable part. The gossips had
confirmed the fears which Mrs. Daker had created. I had picked up scraps
here and there which I had put together.
"I am obliged to keep very dark, my dear Q.M.," Bertram said at last,
still dwelling on the inconvenience to himself. "Hardly dare to move out
of the quarter. Disgusting bore."
"A debt?" I asked.
"Worse."
"What then, an entanglement; the old story, petticoats?"
"Precisely. To-day I ought to be anywhere but here; the old boy is over,
or will be, in a few hours."
The whole story was breaking upon me; Bertram saw it, and my manner,
become icy to him, was closing the sources upon me. I resolved to get
the mystery cleared up. I resumed my former manner with him, ordered
some Burgundy, and entreated him to proceed.
"You remember," he said, "your story about the girl you met travelling
with her husband on the Boulogne boat--Mrs. Daker." His voice fell as he
pronounced the name. "I deceived you, my dear Q. M., when I affected
unconcern and ignorance."
"I know it, Bertram," was my answer. "But that is unimportant: go on."
"I met Mrs. Daker at her hotel, very soon after she arrived in Paris.
She talked about you; and I happened to say that I knew you. We were
friends at once."
"More than friends."
"I see," Bertram continued, much relieved at finding his revelation
forestalled in its chief episodes; "I see there is not much to tell
you. You are pretty well posted up. I cannot see why you should look so
savage; Mrs. Daker is no relation of yours."
"No!" I shouted, for I could not hold my passion--"had she been----"
"You would have the right to call me to account. As it is," Bertram
added, rising, "I decline to tell you more, and I shall wish you
good-day."
After all Bertram was right; I had no claim to urge, no wrong to
redress. Besides, by my hastiness, I was letting the thread slip through
my fingers.
"Sit down, Bertram; you are the touchiest man alive. It is no concern of
mine, but I have seen more than you imagine--I have seen Daker; I have
been with Sharp."
Bertram grasped my arm.
"Tell me all, then; I must know all. You don't know how I have suffered,
my dear Q. M. Tell me everything."
"First let me ask you, Bertram, have you been an honourable man to Mrs.
Daker?"
"Explain yourself."
"Where is she? Her uncle has broken his heart!"
"All I need say is, that she is with me, and that it is I who have
sacrificed almost my honour in keeping her with me, after----"
I understood the case completely now.
"You found the prey at the right moment, Bertram. Poor forsaken woman!
You took it; you lost it; it falls into your hands again--broken unto
death."
"Unto death!" Bertram echoed.
I related to him my adventure in Boulogne; and when I came to Baker's
end, and his bigamy, Bertram exclaimed--
"The villain! My dear Q. M., I loved--I do love her; she might have been
my wife. The villain!"
"You say she is with you, Bertram. Where? Can I see her?"
"You cannot, she's very ill So ill, I doubt----"
"And you are here, Bertram?"
"Her uncle--Sharp--is with her by this time. She implored me not to be
in the way. There would be a row, you know, and I hate rows."
It was Bertram to the last. _He_ hated rows! I suddenly turned upon him
with an idea that flashed through my mind.
"Bertram, you owe this poor woman some reparation. You love her, you
say--or have loved her."
"Do love her now."
"She is a free woman; indeed, poor soul, she has always been. Marry
her--take her away--and get to some quiet place where you will be
unknown. You will be happy with her, or I have strangely misread her."
"Can't," Bertram dolefully answered. "Not a farthing."
"I'll help you."
Bertram grasped my hand. His difficulty was removed.
I continued rapidly, "Give me your address. I'll see Sharp, and, if they
permit me, Mrs. Daker. Let us make an effort to end this miserable
business well. You had better remain behind till I have settled with
Sharp."
Bertram remained inert, without power of thinking or speaking, in his
seat. I pushed him, to rouse him. "Bertram, the address--quick."
"Too late, my dear Q. M.--much too late. She's dying--I am sure of it."
The address was 102 in the next street to that in which we had been
breakfasting. I hurried off, tearing myself, at last, by force from
Bertram. I ran down the street, round the corner, looking right and left
at the numbers as I ran. I was within a few doors of the number when I
came with a great shock against a man, who was walking like myself
without looking ahead. I growled and was pushing past, when an iron grip
fell upon my shoulder. It was Reuben Sharp. He was so altered I had
difficulty in recognising him. At that moment he looked a madman; his
eyes were wild and savage; his lips were blue; his face was masked by
convulsive twitches.
"I was running to see you. Come back," I said.
"It's no use--no use. They can ill-treat her no more. My darling Emmy!
It's all over--all over--and you have been very kind to me."
The poor man clapped his heavy hands upon me like the paws of a lion,
and wept, as weak women and children weep.
Yea, it was all over.
It was on New Year's Day, 1867, I supported Reuben Sharp, following a
hearse to the cemetery hard by. Lucy Rowe accompanied us--at my urgent
request--and her presence served to soften and support old Reuben's
honest Kentish heart in his desolate agony. As they lowered the coffin a
haggard face stretched over a tomb behind us. Sharp was blinded with
tears, and did not see it.