"So, on the ruins he himself had made.
Sat Marius reft of all his former glory."
"Can you understand me, sir?"
Gabriel Cassilis sat in his own study. It was the day after the
garden-party. He slept through the night, and in the morning rose
and dressed as usual. Then he took his seat in his customary chair
at his table. Before him lay papers, but he did not read them. He
sat upright, his frock-coat tightly buttoned across his chest, and
rapped his knuckles with his gold eyeglasses as if he was thinking.
They brought him breakfast, and he took a cup of tea. Then he motioned
them to take the things away. They gave him the _Times_, and he laid
it mechanically at his elbow. But he did not speak, nor did he seem to
attend to what was done around him. And his eyes had a far-off look in
them.
"Can you understand me, sir?"
The speaker was his secretary. He came in a cab, panting, eager to see
if there was still any hope. Somehow or other it was whispered already
in the City that Gabriel Cassilis had had some sort of stroke. And
there was terrible news besides.
Mr. Mowll asked because there was something in his patron's face which
frightened him. His eyes were changed. They had lost the keen sharp
look which in a soldier means victory; in a scholar, clearness of
purpose; in a priest, knowledge of human nature and ability to use
that knowledge in a financier, the power and the intuition of success.
That was gone. In its place an expression almost of childish softness.
And another thing--the lips, once set firm and close, were parted now
and mobile.
The other things were nothing. That a man of sixty-five should in a
single night become a man of eighty; that the iron grey hair should
become white; that a steady hand should shake, and straight shoulders
be bent. It was the look in his face, the far-off look, which made the
secretary ask that question before he went on.
Mr. Cassilis nodded his head gently. He could understand.
"You left the telegrams unopened for a week and more!" cried the
impatient clerk. "Why--Oh, why!--did you not let me open them?"
There was no reply.
"If I had known, I could have acted. Even the day before yesterday I
could have acted. The news came yesterday morning. It was all over the
City by three. And Eldorado's down to nothing in a moment."
Mr. Cassilis looked a mild inquiry. No anxiety in that look at all.
"Eldorado won't pay up her interest. It's due next week. Nothing to
pay it with. Your agent in New York telegraphed this a week ago. He's
been confirming the secret every day since. O Lord! O Lord! And you
the only man who had the knowledge, and all that stake in it! Can you
speak, sir?"
For his master's silence was terrible to him.
"Listen, then. Ten days ago Eldorados went down after Wylie's
pamphlet. You told him what to write and you paid him, just as you did
last year. But you tried to hide it from me. That was wrong, sir. I've
served you faithfully for twenty years. But never mind that. You
bought in at 64. Then the Eldorado minister wrote to the paper. Stock
went up to 75. You stood to win, only the day before yesterday,
£260,000; more than a quarter of a million. Yesterday, by three, they
were down to 16. This morning they are down to 8. And it's
settling-day, and you lose--you lose--your all. Oh, what a day, what a
day!"
Still no complaint, not even a sigh from the patient man in the
Windsor chair. Only that gentle tapping of the knuckles, and that
far-off look.
"The great name of Gabriel Cassilis dragged in the dust! All your
reputation gone--the whole work of your life--O sir! can't you feel
even that? Can't you feel the dreadful end of it all--Gabriel
Cassilis, the great Gabriel Cassilis, a LAME DUCK!"
Not even that. The work of his life was forgotten with all its hopes,
and the great financier, listening to his clerk with the polite
impatience of one who listens to a wearisome sermon, was trying to
understand what was the meaning of that black shadow which lay upon
his mind and made him uneasy. For the rest a perfect calm in his
brain.
"People will say it was the shock of the Eldorado smash. Well, sir, it
wasn't that; I know so much; but it's best to let people think so. If
you haven't a penny left in the world you have your character, and
that's as high as ever.
"Fortunately," Mr. Mowll went on, "my own little savings were not in
Eldorado Stock. But my employment is gone, I suppose. You will
recommend me, I hope, sir. And I do think that I've got some little
reputation in the City."
It was not for want of asserting himself that this worthy man failed,
at any rate, of achieving his reputation. For twenty years he had
magnified his office as confidential adviser of a great City light;
among his friends and in his usual haunts he successfully posed as one
burdened with the weight of affairs, laden with responsibility, and at
all times oppressed by the importance of his thoughts. He carried a
pocket-book which shut with a clasp; in the midst of a conversation he
would stop, become abstracted, rush at the pocket-book, so to speak,
confide a jotting to its care, shut it with a snap, and then go on
with a smile and an excuse. Some said that he stood in with Gabriel
Cassilis; all thought that he shared his secrets, and gave advice when
asked for it.
As a matter of fact, he was a clerk, and had always been a clerk; but
he was a clerk who knew a few things which might have been awkward if
told generally. He had a fair salary, but no confidence, no advice,
and not much more real knowledge of what his chief was doing than any
outsider. And in this tremendous smash it was a great consolation to
him to reflect that the liabilities represented an amount for which it
was really a credit to fail.
Mr. Mowll has since got another place where the transactions are not
so large, but perhaps his personal emoluments greater. In the evenings
he will talk of the great failure.
"We stood to win," he will say, leaning back with a superior
smile,--"we stood to win £260,000. We lost a million and a quarter. I
told him not to hang on too long. Against my advice he did. I
remember--ah, only four days before it happened--he said to me,
'Mowll, my boy,' he said, 'I've never known you wrong yet. But for
once I fancy my own opinion. We've worked together for twenty years,'
he said, 'and you've the clearest head of any man I ever saw,' he
said. 'But here I think you're wrong. And I shall hold on for another
day or two,' he said. Ah, little he knew what a day or two would bring
forth! And he hasn't spoken since. Plays with his little boy, and goes
about in a Bath-chair. What a man he was! and what a pair--if I may
say so--we made between us among the bulls and the bears! Dear me,
dear me!"
It may be mentioned here that everything was at once given up; the
house in Kensington Palace Gardens, with its costly furniture, its
carriages, plate, library, and pictures. Mr. Cassilis signed whatever
documents were brought for signature without hesitation, provided a
copy of his own signature was placed before him. Otherwise he could
not write his name.
And never a single word of lamentation, reproach, or sorrow. The past
was, and is still, dead to him; all the past except one thing, and
that is ever with him.
For sixty years of his life, this man of the City, whose whole desire
was to make money, to win in the game which he played with rare
success and skill, regarded bankruptcy as the one thing to be dreaded,
or at least to be looked upon, because it was absurd to dread it, as a
thing bringing with it the whole of dishonour. Not to meet your
engagements was to be in some sort a criminal. And now he was
proclaimed as one who could not meet his engagements.
If he understood what had befallen him he did not care about it. The
trouble was slight indeed in comparison with the other disaster. The
honour of his wife and the legitimacy of his child--these were gone;
and the man felt what it is that is greater than money gained or money
lost.
The blow which fell upon him left his brain clear while it changed the
whole course of his thoughts and deprived him partially of memory. But
it destroyed his power of speech. That rare and wonderful disease
which seems to attack none but the strongest, which separates the
brain from the tongue, takes away the knowledge and the sense of
language, and kills the power of connecting words with things, while
it leaves that of understanding what is said--the disease which
doctors call Aphasia--was upon Mr. Gabriel Cassilis.
In old men this is an incurable disease. Gabriel Cassilis will never
speak again. He can read, listen, and understand, but he can frame no
words with his lips nor write them with his hand. He is a prisoner who
has free use of his limbs. He is separated from the world by a greater
gulf than that which divides the blind and the deaf from the rest of
us, because he cannot make known his thoughts, his wants, or his
wishes.
It took some time to discover what was the matter with him. Patients
are not often found suffering from aphasia, and paralysis was the
first name given to his disease.
But it was very early found out that Mr. Cassilis understood all that
was said to him, and by degrees they learned what he liked and what he
disliked.
Victoria Cassilis sat up-stairs, waiting for something--she knew not
what--to happen. Her maid told her that Mr. Cassilis was ill; she made
no reply; she did not ask to see him; she did not ask for any further
news of him. She sat in her own room for two days, waiting.
Then Joseph Jagenal asked if he might see her.
She refused at first; but on hearing that he proposed to stay in the
house till she could receive him, she gave way.
He came from Lawrence, perhaps. He would bring her a message of some
kind; probably a menace.
"You have something to say to me, Mr. Jagenal?" Her face was set hard,
but her eyes were wistful. He saw that she was afraid. When a woman is
afraid, you may make her do pretty well what you please.
"I have a good deal to tell you, Mrs. Cassilis; and I am sorry to say
it is of an unpleasant nature.
"I have heard," he went on, "from Mr. Colquhoun that you made a
remarkable statement in the presence of Miss Fleming, and in the
hearing of Mr. Cassilis."
"Lawrence informed you correctly, I have no doubt," she replied
coldly.
"That statement of course was untrue," said Joseph, knowing that no
record ever was more true. "And therefore I venture to advise----"
"On the part of Lawrence?"
"In the name of Mr. Colquhoun, partly; partly in your own
interest----"
"Go on, if you please, Mr. Jagenal."
"Believing that statement to be untrue," he repeated, "for
otherwise I could not give this advice, I recommend to all parties
concerned--silence. Your husband's paralysis is attributed to the
shock of his bankruptcy----"
"His what?" cried Victoria, who had heard as yet nothing of the City
disaster.
"His bankruptcy. Mr. Cassilis is ruined."
"Ruined! Mr. Cassilis!"
She was startled out of herself.
Ruined! The thought of such disaster had never once crossed her
brains. Ruined! That Colossus of wealth--the man whom she married for
his money, while secretly she despised his power of accumulating
money!
"He is ruined, Mrs. Cassilis, and hopelessly. I have read certain
papers which he put into my hands this morning. It is clear to me that
his mind has been for some weeks agitated by certain anonymous letters
which came to him every day, and accused you--pardon me, Mrs.
Cassilis--accused you of--infidelity. The letters state that there is
a secret of some kind connected with your former acquaintance with Mr.
Colquhoun; that you have been lately in the habit of receiving him or
meeting him every day; that you were in his chambers one evening when
Mr. Cassilis called; with other particulars extremely calculated to
excite jealousy and suspicion. Lastly, he was sent by the writer to
Twickenham. The rest, I believe you know."
She made no reply.
"There can be no doubt, not the least doubt, that had your husband's
mind been untroubled, this would never have happened. The disaster is
due to his jealousy."
"I could kill her!" said Mrs. Cassilis, clenching her fist. "I could
kill her!"
"Kill whom?"
"The woman who wrote those letters. It was a woman. No man could have
done such a thing. A woman's trick. Go on."
"There is nothing more to say. How far other people are involved with
your husband, I cannot tell. I am going now into the City to find out
if I can. Your wild words, Mrs. Cassilis, and your unguarded conduct,
have brought about misfortunes on which you little calculated. But I
am not here to reproach you."
"You are my husband's man of business, I suppose," she replied
coldly--"a paid servant of his. What you say has no importance, nor
what you think. What did Lawrence bid you tell me?"
Joseph Jagenal's face clouded for a moment. But what was the good of
feeling resentment with such a woman, and in such a miserable
business?
"You have two courses open to you," he went on. "You may, by repeating
the confession you made in the hearing of Mr. Cassilis, draw upon
yourself such punishment as the Law, provided the confession be true,
can inflict. That will be a grievous thing to you. It will drive you
out of society, and brand you as a criminal; it will lock you up for
two years in prison; it will leave a stigma never to be forgotten or
obliterated; it means ruin far, far worse than what you have brought
on Mr. Cassilis. On the other hand, you may keep silence. This at
least will secure the legitimacy of your boy, and will keep for you
the amount settled on you at your marriage. But you may choose. If the
statement you made is true, of course I can be no party to compounding
a felony----"
"And Lawrence?" she interposed. "What does Lawrence say?"
"In any case Mr. Colquhoun will leave England at once."
"He will marry that Phillis girl? You may tell him," she hissed out,
"that I will do anything and suffer anything rather than consent to
his marrying her, or any one else."
"Mr. Colquhoun informs me further," pursued the crafty lawyer, "that,
for some reason only known to himself, he will never marry during the
life of a certain person. Phillis Fleming will probably marry the
Honourable Mr. Ronald Dunquerque."
She buried her head in her hands, not to hide any emotion, for there
was none to hide, but to think. Presently she rose, and said, "Take me
to--my husband, if you please."
Joseph Jagenal, as a lawyer, is tolerably well versed in such
wickedness and deceptions as the human heart is capable of. At the
same time, he acknowledges to himself that the speech made by Victoria
Cassilis to her husband, and the manner in which it was delivered,
surpassed anything he had ever experienced or conceived.
Gabriel Cassilis was sitting in an arm-chair near his table. In his
arms was his infant son, a child of a year old, for whose amusement he
was dangling a bunch of keys. The nurse was standing beside him.
When his wife opened the door he looked up, and there crossed his face
a sudden expression of such repulsion, indignation, and horror, that
the lawyer fairly expected the lady to give way altogether. But she
did not. Then Mrs. Cassilis motioned the nurse to leave them, and
Victoria said what she had come to say. She stood at the table, in the
attitude of one who commands respect rather than one who entreats
pardon. Her accentuation was precise, and her words as carefully
chosen as if she had written them down first. But her husband held his
eyes down, as if afraid of meeting her gaze. You would have called him
a culprit waiting for reproof and punishment.
"I learn to-day for the first time that you have suffered from certain
attacks made upon me by an anonymous writer; I learn also for the
first time, and to my great regret, that you have suffered in fortune
as well as in health. I have myself been too ill in mind and body to
be told anything. I am come to say at once that I am sorry if any rash
words of mine have given you pain, or any foolish actions of mine have
given you reason for jealousy. The exact truth is that Lawrence
Colquhoun and I were once engaged. The breaking off of that engagement
caused me at the time the greatest unhappiness. I resolved then that
he should never be engaged to any other girl if I could prevent it by
any means in my power. My whole action of late, which appeared to you
as if I was running after an old lover, was the prevention of his
engagement, which I determined to break off, with Phillis Fleming. In
the heat of my passion I used words which were not true. They occurred
to me at the moment. I said he was my husband. I meant to have said my
promised husband. You now know, Mr. Cassilis, the whole secret. I am
deeply humiliated in having to confess my revengeful spirit. I am
punished in your affliction."
Always herself; always her own punishment.
"We can henceforth, I presume, Mr. Cassilis, resume our old manner of
life."
Mr. Cassilis made no answer, but he patted the head of his child, and
Joseph Jagenal saw the tears running down his cheeks. For he knew that
the woman lied to him.
"For the sake of the boy, Mr. Cassilis," the lawyer pleaded, "let
things go on as before."
He made no sign.
"Will you let me say something for you in the interests of the child?"
He nodded.
"Then, Mrs. Cassilis, your husband consents that there shall be no
separation and no scandal. But it will be advisable for you both that
there shall be as little intercourse as possible. Your husband will
breakfast and dine by himself, and occupy his own apartments. You are
free, provided you live in the same house, and keep up appearances, to
do whatever you please. But you will not obtrude your presence upon
your husband."
Mr. Cassilis nodded again. Then he sought his dictionary, and hunted
for a word. It was the word he had first found, and was "Silence."
"Yes; you will also observe strict silence on what has passed at
Twickenham, here or elsewhere. Should that silence not be observed,
the advisers of Mr. Cassilis will recommend such legal measures as may
be necessary."
Again Gabriel Cassilis nodded. He had not once looked up at his wife
since that first gaze, in which he concentrated the hatred and
loathing of his speechless soul.
"Is that all?" asked Victoria Cassilis. "Or have we more
arrangements?"
"That is all, madam," said Joseph, opening the door with great
ceremony.
She went away as she had come, with cold haughtiness. Nothing seemed
to touch her; not her husband's misery; not his ruin; not the sight of
her child. One thing only pleased her. Lawrence Colquhoun would not
marry during her lifetime. Bah! she would live a hundred years, and he
should never marry at all.
In her own room was her maid.
"Tomlinson," said Mrs. Cassilis--in spite of her outward calm, her
nerves were strung to the utmost, and she felt that she must speak to
some one--"Tomlinson, if a woman wrote anonymous letters about you, if
those letters brought misery and misfortune, what would you do to that
woman?"
"I do not know, ma'am," said Tomlinson, whose cheeks grew white.
"I will kill her, Tomlinson! I will kill her! I will get those letters
and prove the handwriting, and find that woman out. I will devote my
life to it, and I will have no mercy on her when I have found her. I
will kill her--somehow--by poison--by stabbing--somehow. Don't
tremble, woman; I don't mean you. And Tomlinson, forget what I have
said."
Tomlinson could not forget. She tottered from the room, trembling in
every limb.
The wretched maid had her revenge. In full and overflowing measure.
And yet she was not satisfied. The exasperating thing about revenge is
that it never does satisfy, but leaves you at the end as angry as at
the beginning. Your enemy is crushed; you have seen him tied to a
stake, as is the pleasant wont of the Red Indian, and stick arrows,
knives, and red-hot things into him. These hurt so much that he is
glad to die. But he is dead, and you can do no more to him. And it
seems a pity, because if you had kept him alive, you might have
thought of other and more dreadful ways of revenge. These doubts will
occur to the most revenge-satiated Christian, and they lead to
self-reproach. After all, one might just as well forgive a fellow at
once.
Mrs. Cassilis was a selfish and heartless woman. All the harm that was
done to her was the loss of her great wealth. And what had her husband
done to Tomlinson that he should be stricken? And what had others done
who were involved with him in the great disaster?
Tomlinson was so terrified, however, by the look which crossed her
mistress's face, that she went away that very evening; pretended to
have received a telegram from Liverpool; when she got there wrote for
boxes and wages, with a letter in somebody else's writing, _for a
reason_, to her mistress, and then went to America, where she had
relations. She lives now in a city of the Western States, where her
brother keeps a store. She is a leader in her religious circle; and I
think that if she were to see Victoria Cassilis by any accident in the
streets of that city, she would fly again, and to the farthest corners
of the earth.
So much for revenge; and I do hope that Tomlinson's example will be
laid to heart, and pondered by other ladies'-maids whose mistresses
are selfish and sharp-tempered.