GRIM ARABELLA CRANE.
Once on a time there lived a merchant named Fossett, a widower with three
children, of whom a daughter, Arabella, was by some years the eldest. He
was much respected, deemed a warm man, and a safe--attended diligently to
his business--suffered no partner, no foreman, to dictate or intermeddle
--liked his comforts, but made no pretence to fashion. His villa was at
Clapham, not a showy but a solid edifice, with lodge, lawn, and gardens
chiefly notable for what is technically called glass--viz. a range of
glass-houses on the most improved principles, the heaviest pines, the
earliest strawberries. "I'm no judge of flowers," quoth Mr. Fossett,
meekly. "Give me a plain lawn, provided it be close-shaven. But I say
to my gardener: 'Forcing is my hobby--a cucumber with my fish all the
year round!'" Yet do not suppose Mr Fossett ostentatious--quite the
reverse. He would no more ruin himself for the sake of dazzling others,
than he would for the sake of serving them. He liked a warm house,
spacious rooms, good living, old wine, for their inherent merits: He
cared not to parade them to public envy. When he dined alone, or with
a single favoured guess, the best Lafitte, the oldest sherry!--when
extending the rites of miscellaneous hospitality to neighbours,
relations, or other slight acquaintances--for Lafitte, Julien; and for
sherry, Cape!--Thus not provoking vanity, nor courting notice, Mr.
Fossett was without an enemy, and seemed without a care. Formal were his
manners, formal his household, formal even the stout cob that bore him
from Cheapside to Clapham, from Claphain to Cheapside. That cob could
not even prick up its ears if it wished to shy--its ears were cropped,
so were its mane and its tail.
Arabella early gave promise of beauty, and more than ordinary power of
intellect and character. Her father be stowed on her every advantage of
education. She was sent to a select boarding-school of the highest
reputation; the strictest discipline, the best masters, the longest
bills. At the age of seventeen she had become the show pupil of the
seminary. Friends wondered somewhat why the prim merchant took such
pains to lavish on his daughter the worldly accomplishments which seemed
to give him no pleasure, and of which he never spoke with pride. But
certainly, if she was so clever--first-rate musician, exquisite artist,
accomplished linguist, "it was very nice in old Fossett to bear it so
meekly, never crying her up, nor showing her off to less fortunate
parents--very nice in him--good sense--greatness of mind."
"Arabella," said the worthy man one day, a little time after his eldest
daughter had left school for good; "Arabella," said he, "Mrs. -------,"
naming the head teacher in that famous school, "pays you a very high
compliment in a letter I received from her this morning. She says it is
a pity you are not a poor man's daughter--that you are so steady and so
clever that you could make a fortune for yourself as a teacher."
Arabella at that age could smile gaily, and gaily she smiled at the
notion conveyed in the compliment.
"No one can guess," resumed the father, twirling his thumbs and speaking
rather through his nose; "the ups and downs in this mortal sphere of
trial, 'specially in the mercantile community. If ever, when I'm dead
and gone, adversity should come upon you, you will gratefully remember
that I have given you the best of education, and take care of your little
brother and sister, who are both--stupid!"
These doleful words did not make much impression on Arabella, uttered as
they were in a handsome drawing-room, opening on the neat-shaven lawn it
took three gardeners to shave, with a glittering side-view of those
galleries of glass in which strawberries were ripe at Christmas, and
cucumbers never failed to fish. Time--went on. Arabella was now twenty-
three--a very fine girl, with a decided manner--much occupied by her
music, her drawing, her books, and her fancies. Fancies--for, like most
girls with very active heads and idle hearts, she had a vague yearning
for some excitement beyond the monotonous routine of a young lady's life;
and the latent force of her nature inclined her to admire whatever was
out of the beaten track--whatever was wild and daring. She had received
two or three offers from young gentlemen in the same mercantile community
as that which surrounded her father in this sphere of trial. But they
did not please her; and she believed her father when he said that they
only courted her under the idea that he would come down with something
handsome; "whereas," said the merchant, "I hope you will marry an honest
man, who will like you for yourself; and wait for your fortune till my
will is read. As King William says to his son, in the History of
England, 'I don't mean to strip till I go to bed.'"
One night, at a ball in Clapham, Arabella saw the man who was destined to
exercise so baleful an influence over her existence. Jasper Losely had
been brought to this ball by a young fellow-clerk in the same commercial
house as himself; and then in all the bloom of that conspicuous beauty,
to which the miniature Arabella had placed before his eyes so many years
afterwards did but feeble justice, it may well be conceived that he
concentred on himself the admiring gaze of the assembly. Jasper was
younger than Arabella; but, what with the height of his stature and the
self-confidence of his air, he looked four or five and twenty.
Certainly, in so far as the distance from childhood may be estimated by
the loss of innocence, Jasper might have been any age! He was told that
old Fossett's daughter would have a very fine fortune; that she was a
strong-minded young lady, who governed her father, and would choose for
herself; and accordingly he devoted himself to Arabella the whole of the
evening. The effect produced on the mind of this ill-fated woman by her
dazzling admirer was as sudden as it proved to be lasting. There was a
strange charm in the very contrast between his rattling audacity and the
bashful formalities of the swains who had hitherto wooed her as if she
frightened them. Even his good looks fascinated her less than that vital
energy and power about the lawless brute, which to her seemed the
elements of heroic character, though but the attributes of riotous
spirits, magnificent formation, flattered vanity, and imperious egotism.
She was a bird gazing spell-bound on a gay young boa-constrictor, darting
from bough to bough, sunning its brilliant hues, and showing off all its
beauty, just before it takes the bird for its breakfast.
When they parted that night, their intimacy had so far advanced that
arrangements had been made for its continuance. Arabella had an
instinctive foreboding that her father would be less charmed than herself
with Jasper Losely; that, if Jasper were presented to him, he would
possibly forbid her farther acquaintance with a young clerk, however
superb his outward appearance. She took the first false step. She had a
maiden aunt by the mother's side, who lived in Bloomsbury, gave and went
to small parties, to which Jasper could easily get introduced. She
arranged to pay a visit for some weeks to this aunt, who was then very
civil to her, accepting with marked kindness seasonable presents of
strawberries, pines, spring chickens, and so forth, and offering in turn,
whenever it was convenient, a spare room, and whatever amusement a round
of small parties, and the innocent flirtations incidental thereto, could
bestow. Arabella said nothing to her father about Jasper Losely, and to
her aunt's she went. Arabella saw Jasper very often; they became engaged
to each other, exchanged vows and love-tokens, locks of hair, &c.
Jasper, already much troubled by duns, became naturally ardent to insure
his felicity and Arabella's supposed fortune. Arabella at last summoned
courage, and spoke to her father. To her delighted surprise, Mr.
Fossett, after some moralising, more on the uncertainty of life in
general than her clandestine proceedings in particular, agreed to see Mr.
Jasper Losely, and asked him down to dinner. After dinner, over 'a
bottle of Lafitte, in an exceedingly plain but exceedingly weighty silver
jug, which made Jasper's mouth water (I mean the jug), Mr. Fossett,
commencing with that somewhat coarse though royal saying of William the
Conqueror, with which he had before edified his daughter, assured Jasper
that he gave his full consent to the young gentleman's nuptials with
Arabella, provided Jasper or his relations would maintain her in a plain
respectable way, and wait for her fortune till his (Fossett's) will was
read. What that fortune would be, Mr. Fossett declined even to hint.
Jasper went away very much cooled. Still the engagement remained in
force; the nuptials were tacitly deferred. Jasper and his relations
maintain a wife! Preposterous idea! It would take a clan of relations
and a Zenana of wives to maintain in that state to which he deemed
himself entitled--Jasper himself! But just as he was meditating the
possibility of a compromise with old Fossett, by which he would agree to
wait till the will was read for contingent advantages, provided Fossett,
in his turn, would agree in the mean while to afford lodging and board,
with a trifle for pocket-money, to Arabella and himself, in the Clapham
villa, which, though not partial to rural scenery, Jasper preferred, on
the whole, to a second floor in the City,--old Fossett fell ill, took to
his bed; was unable to attend to his business, some one else attended to
it; and the consequence was, that the house stopped payment, and was
discovered to have been insolvent for the last ten years. Not a
discreditable bankruptcy. There might perhaps be seven shillings in the
pound ultimately paid, and not more than forty families irretrievably
ruined. Old Fossett, safe in his bed, bore the affliction with
philosophical composure; observed to Arabella that he had always warned
her of the ups and downs in this sphere of trial; referred again with
pride to her first-rate education; commended again to her care Tom and
Biddy; and, declaring that he died in charity with all men, resigned
himself to the last slumber.
Arabella at first sought a refuge with her maiden aunt. But that lady,
though not hit in pocket by her brother-in-law's failure, was more
vehement against his memory than his most injured creditor--not only that
she deemed herself unjustly defrauded of the pines, strawberries, and
spring chickens, by which she had been enabled to give small parties at
small cost, though with ample show, but that she was robbed of the
consequence she had hitherto derived from the supposed expectations of
her niece. In short, her welcome was so hostile, and her condolences so
cutting, that Arabella quitted her door with a solemn determination never
again to enter it.
And now the nobler qualities of the bankrupt's daughter rose at once into
play. Left penniless, she resolved by her own exertions to support and
to rear her young brother and sister. The great school to which she had
been the ornament willingly received her as a teacher, until some more
advantageous place in a private family, and with a salary worthy of her
talents and accomplishments, could be found.
Her intercourse with Jasper became necessarily suspended. She had the
generosity to write, offering to release him from his engagement. Jasper
considered himself fully released without that letter; but he deemed it
neither gallant nor discreet to say so. Arabella might obtain a
situation with larger salary than she could possibly need, the
superfluities whereof Jasper might undertake to invest. Her aunt had
evidently something to leave, though she might have nothing to give. In
fine, Arabella, if not rich enough for a wife, might be often rich enough
for a friend at need; and so long as he was engaged to her for life, it
must be not more her pleasure than her duty to assist him to live.
Besides, independently of these prudential though not ardent motives for
declaring unalterable fidelity to troth, Jasper at that time really did
entertain what he called love for the handsome young woman--flattered
that one of attainments so superior to all the girls he had ever known
should be so proud even less of his affection for her than her own
affection for himself. Thus the engagement lasted--interviews none--
letters frequent. Arabella worked hard, looking to the future; Jasper
worked as little as possible, and was very much bored by the present.
Unhappily, as it turned out, so great a sympathy, not only amongst the
teachers, but amongst her old schoolfellows, was felt for Arabella's
reverse; her character for steadiness, as well as talent, stood so high,
and there was something so creditable in her resolution to maintain her
orphan brother and sister, that an effort was made to procure her a
livelihood much more lucrative, and more independent, than she could
obtain either in a school or a family. Why not take a small house of her
own, live there with her fellow-orphans, and give lessons out by the
hour? Several families at once agreed so to engage her, and an income
adequate to all her wants was assured. Arabella adopted this plan. She
took the house; Bridget Greggs, the nurse of her infancy, became her
servant, and soon to that house, stealthily in the shades of evening,
glided Jasper Losely. She could not struggle against his influence--had
not the heart to refuse his visits--he was so poor--in such scrapes--and
professed himself to be so unhappy. There now became some one else to
toil for, besides the little brother and sister. But what were
Arabella's gains to a man who already gambled? New afflictions smote
her. A contagious fever broke out in the neighborhood; her little
brother caught it; her little sister sickened the next day; in less than
a week two small coffins were borne from her door by the Black Horses--
borne to that plot of sunny turf in the pretty suburban cemetery, bought
with the last earnings made for the little ones by the mother-like
sister:--Motherless lone survivor! what! no friend on earth, no soother
but that direful Jasper! Alas! the truly dangerous Venus is not that
Erycina round whom circle Jest and Laughter. Sorrow, and that sense of
solitude which makes us welcome a footstep as a child left in the
haunting dark welcomes the entrance of light, weaken the outworks of
female virtue more than all the vain levities of mirth, or the flatteries
which follow the path of Beauty through the crowd. Alas, and alas! let
the tale hurry on!
Jasper Losely has still more solemnly sworn to marry his adored Arabella.
But when? When they are rich enough. She feels as if her spirit was
gone--as if she could work no more. She was no weak commonplace girl,
whom love can console for shame. She had been rigidly brought up; her
sense of female rectitude was keen; her remorse was noiseless, but it was
stern. Harassments of a more vulgar nature beset her: she had
forestalled her sources of income; she had contracted debts for Jasper's
sake;--in vain: her purse was emptied, yet his no fuller. His creditors
pressed him; he told her that he must hide. One winter's day he thus
departed; she saw him no more for a year. She heard, a few days after he
left her, of his father's crime and committal. Jasper was sent abroad by
his maternal uncle, at his father's prayer; sent to a commercial house
in France, in which the uncle obtained him a situation. In fact, the
young man had been despatched to France under another name, in order to
save him from the obloquy which his father had brought upon his own.
Soon came William Losely's trial and sentence. Arabella felt the
disgrace acutely--felt how it would affect the audacious insolent Jasper;
did not wonder that he forbore to write to her. She conceived him bowed
by shame, but she was buoyed up by her conviction that they should meet
again. For good or for ill, she held herself bound to him for life. But
meanwhile the debts she had incurred on his account came upon her. She
was forced to dispose of her house; and at this time Mrs. Lyndsay,
looking out for some first-rate superior governess for Matilda Darrell,
was urged by all means to try and secure for that post Arabella Fossett.
The highest testimonials from the school at which she had been reared,
from the most eminent professional masters, from the families at which
she had recently taught, being all brought to bear upon Mr. Darrell, he
authorised Mrs. Lyndsay to propose such a salary as could not fail to
secure a teacher of such rare qualifications. And thus Arabella became
governess to Miss Darrell.
There is a kind of young lady of whom her nearest relations will say, "I
can't make that girl out." Matilda Darrell was that kind of young lady.
She talked very little; she moved very noiselessly; she seemed to regard
herself as a secret which she had solemnly sworn not to let out. She had
been steeped in slyness from her early infancy by a sly mother. Mrs.
Darrell was a woman who had always something to conceal. There was
always some note to be thrust out of sight; some visit not to be spoken
of; something or other which Matilda was not on any account to mention to
Papa.
When Mrs. Darrell died, Matilda was still a child, but she still
continued to view her father as a person against whom prudence demanded
her to be constantly on her guard. It was not that she was exactly
afraid of him--he was very gentle to her, as he was to all children; but
his loyal nature was antipathetic to hers. She had no sympathy with him.
How confide her thoughts to him? She had an instinctive knowledge that
those thoughts were not such as could harmonise with his. Yet, though
taciturn, uncaressing, undemonstrative, she appeared mild and docile.
Her reserve was ascribed to constitutional timidity. Timid to a degree
she usually seemed; yet, when you thought you had solved the enigma, she
said or did something so coolly determined, that you were forced again to
exclaim, "I can't make that girl out!" She was not quick at her lessons.
You had settled in your mind that she was dull, when, by a chance remark,
you were startled to find that she was very sharp; keenly observant, when
you had fancied her fast asleep. She had seemed, since her mother's
death, more fond of Mrs. Lyndsay and Caroline than of any other human
beings--always appeared sullen or out of spirits when they were absent;
yet she confided to them no more than she did to her father. You would
suppose from this description that Matilda could inspire no liking in
those with whom she lived. Not so; her very secretiveness had a sort of
attraction--a puzzle always creates some interest. Then her face, though
neither handsome nor pretty, had in it a treacherous softness--a subdued,
depressed expression. A kind observer could not but say with an
indulgent pity; "There must be a good deal of heart in that girl, if one
could but--make her out."
She appeared to take at once to Arabella, more than she had taken to Mrs.
Lyndsay, or even to Caroline, with whom she had been brought up as a
sister, but who, then joyous and quick and innocently fearless--with her
soul in her eyes and her heart on her lips--had no charm for Matilda,
because there she saw no secret to penetrate, and her she had no object
in deceiving.
But this stranger, of accomplishments so rare, of character so decided,
with a settled gloom on her lip, a gathered care on her brow--there was
some one to study, and some one with whom she felt a sympathy; for she
detected at once that Arabella was also a secret.
At first, Arabella, absorbed in her own reflections, gave to Matilda but
the mechanical attention which a professional teacher bestows on an
ordinary pupil. But an interest in Matilda sprung up in her breast, in
proportion as she conceived a venerating gratitude for Darrell. He was
aware of the pomp and circumstance which had surrounded her earlier
years; he respected the creditable energy with which she had devoted her
talents to the support of the young children thrown upon her care;
compassionated her bereavement of those little fellow-orphans for whom
toil had been rendered sweet; and he strove, by a kindness of forethought
and a delicacy of attention, which were the more prized in a man so
eminent and so preoccupied, to make her forget that she was a salaried
teacher--to place her saliently, and as a matter of course, in the
position of a gentlewoman, guest, and friend. Recognising in her a
certain vigour and force of intellect apart from her mere
accomplishments, he would flatter her scholastic pride, by referring to
her memory in some question of reading, or consulting her judgment on
some point of critical taste. She, in return, was touched by his
chivalrous kindness to the depth of a nature that, though already
seriously injured by its unhappy contact with a soul like Jasper's,
retained that capacity of gratitude, the loss of which is humanity's
last deprivation. Nor this alone: Arabella was startled by the intellect
and character of Darrell into that kind of homage which a woman, who has
hitherto met but her own intellectual inferiors, renders to the first
distinguished personage in whom she recognises, half with humility and
half with awe, an understanding and a culture to which her own reason is
but the flimsy glass-house, and her own knowledge but the forced exotic.
Arabella, thus roused from her first listlessness, sought to requite
Darrell's kindness by exerting every energy to render his insipid
daughter an accomplished woman. So far as mere ornamental education
extends, the teacher was more successful than, with all her experience,
her skill, and her zeal, she had presumed to anticipate. Matilda,
without ear, or taste, or love for music, became a very fair mechanical
musician. Without one artistic predisposition, she achieved the science
of perspective--she attained even to the mixture of colours--she filled a
portfolio with drawings which no young lady need have been ashamed to see
circling round a drawing-room. She carried Matilda's thin mind to the
farthest bound it could have reached without snapping, through an elegant
range of selected histories and harmless feminine classics--through
Gallic dialogues--through Tuscan themes--through Teuton verbs--yea,
across the invaded bounds of astonished Science into the Elementary
Ologies. And all this being done, Matilda Darrell was exactly the same
creature that she was before. In all that related to character, to
inclinations, to heart, even that consummate teacher could give no
intelligible answer, when Mrs. Lyndsay in her softest accents (and no
accents ever were softer) sighed: "Poor dear Matilda! can you make her
out, Miss Fossett?" Miss Fossett could not make her out. But, after the
most attentive study, Miss Fossett had inly decided that there was
nothing to make out--that, like many other very nice girls, Matilda
Darrell was a harmless nullity, what you call "a Miss" white deal or
willow, to which Miss Fossett had done all in the way of increasing its
value as ornamental furniture, when she had veneered it over with
rosewood or satinwood, enriched its edges with ormolu, and strewed its
surface with nicknacks and albums. But Arabella firmly believed Matilda
Darrell to be a quiet, honest, good sort of "Miss," on the whole--very
fond of her, Arabella. The teacher had been several months in Darrell's
family, when Caroline Lyndsay, who had been almost domesticated with
Matilda (sharing the lessons bestowed on the latter, whether by Miss
Fossett or visiting masters), was taken away by Mrs. Lyndsay on a
visit to the old Marchioness of Montfort. Matilda, who was to come out
the next year, was thus almost exclusively with Arabella, who redoubled
all her pains to veneer the white deal, and protect with ormolu its
feeble edges--so that, when it "came out," all should admire that
thoroughly fashionable piece of furniture. It was the habit of Miss
Fossett and her pupil to take a morning walk in the quiet retreats of the
Green Park; and one morning, as they were thus strolling, nursery-maids
and children, and elderly folks who were ordered to take early exercises,
undulating round their unsuspecting way,--suddenly, right upon their path
(unlooked--for as the wolf that startled Horace in the Sabine wood, but
infinitely more deadly than that runaway animal), came Jasper Losely!
Arabella uttered a faint scream. She could not resist--had no thought of
resisting--the impulse to bound forward--lay her hand on his arm. She
was too agitated to perceive whether his predominant feeling was surprise
or rapture. A few hurried words were exchanged, while Matilda Darrell
gave one sidelong glance towards the handsome stranger, and walked
quietly by them. On his part, Jasper said that he had just returned to
London--that he had abandoned for ever all idea of a commercial life--
that his father's misfortune (he gave that gentle appellation to the
incident of penal transportation) had severed him from all former
friends, ties, habits--that he had dropped the name of Losely for ever
--entreated Arabella not to betray it--his name now was Hammond--his
"prospects," he said, "fairer than they had ever been." Under the name
of Hammond, as an independent gentleman, he had made friends more
powerful than he could ever have made under the name of Losely as a city
clerk. He blushed to think he had ever been a city clerk. No doubt he
should get into some Government office; and then, oh then, with assured
income and a certainty to rise, he might claim the longed-for hand of the
"best of creatures."
On Arabella's part, she hastily explained her present position. She was
governess to Miss Darrell--that was Miss Darrell. Arabella must not
leave her walking on by herself--she would write to him. Addresses were
exchanged--Jasper gave a very neat card--"Mr. Hammond, No.--, Duke
Street, St. James's."
Arabella, with a beating heart, hastened to join her friend. At the
rapid glance she had taken of her perfidious lover, she thought him, if
possible, improved. His dress, always studied, was more to the fashion
of polished society, more simply correct--his air more decided.
Altogether he looked prosperous, and his manner had never been more
seductive, in its mixture of easy self-confidence and hypocritical
coaxing. In fact, Jasper had not been long in the French commercial
house--to which he had been sent out of the way while his father's trial
was proceeding and the shame of it fresh--before certain licenses of
conduct had resulted in his dismissal. But, meanwhile, he had made many
friends amongst young men of his own age--those loose wild viveurs who,
without doing anything the law can punish as dishonest, contrive for a
few fast years to live very showily on their wits. In that strange
social fermentation which still prevails in a country where an
aristocracy of birth, exceedingly impoverished, and exceedingly numerous
so far as the right to prefix a De to the name, or to stamp a coronet on
the card, can constitute an aristocrat--is diffused amongst an ambitious,
adventurous, restless, and not inelegant young democracy--each cemented
with the other by that fiction of law called egalite; in that yet
unsettled and struggling society in which so much of the old has been
irretrievably destroyed, and so little of the new has been solidly
constructed--there are much greater varieties, infinitely more subtle
grades and distinctions, in the region of life which lies between
respectability and disgrace, than can be found in a country like ours.
The French novels and dramas may apply less a mirror than a magnifying-
glass to the beings that move through that region. But still those
French novels and dramas do not unfaithfully represent the
classifications of which they exaggerate the types. Those strange
combinations, into one tableau, of students and grisettes; opera-dancers,
authors, viscounts, swindlers, romantic Lorettes, gamblers on the Bourse,
whose pedigree dates from the Crusades; impostors, taking titles from
villages in which their grandsires might have been saddlers--and if
detected, the detection but a matter of laugh; delicate women living like
lawless men; men making trade out of love, like dissolute women, yet with
point of honour so nice, that, doubt their truth or their courage, and--
piff! you are in Charon's boat,--humanity in every civilised land may
present single specimens, more or less, answering to each thus described.
But where, save in France, find them all, if not precisely in the same
salons, yet so crossing each other to and fro as to constitute a social
phase, and give colour to a literature of unquestionable genius? And
where, over orgies so miscellaneously Berecynthian, an atmosphere so
elegantly Horatian? And where can coarseness so vanish into polished
expression as in that diamond-like language--all terseness and sparkle--
which, as friendly to Wit in its airiest prose, as hostile to Passion in
its torrent of cloud-wrack of poetry, seems invented by the Grace out of
spite to the Muse?
Into circles such as those of which the dim outline is here so
imperfectly sketched, Jasper Losely niched himself, as /le bel Anglais/.
(Pleasant representative of the English nation!) Not that those circles
are to have the sole credit of his corruption. No! Justice is justice!
Stand we up for our native land! /Le bel Anglais/ entered those circles a
much greater knave than most of those whom he found there. But there, at
least, he learned to set a yet higher value on his youth, and strength,
and comeliness--on his readiness of resource--on the reckless audacity
that browbeat timid and some even valiant men--on the six feet one of
faultless symmetry that captivated foolish, and some even sensible women.
Gaming was, however, his vice by predilection. A month before Arabella
met him, he had had a rare run of luck. On the strength of it he had
resolved to return to London, and (wholly oblivious of the best of
creatures till she had thus startled him) hunt out and swoop off with an
heiress. Three French friends accompanied him. Each had the same
object. Each believed that London swarmed with heiresses. They were
all three fine-looking men. One was a Count,--at least he said so. But
proud of his rank?--not a bit of it: all for liberty (no man more likely
to lose it)--all for fraternity (no man you would less love as a
brother). And as for /egalite!/--the son of a shoemaker who was /homme
de lettres/, and wrote in a journal, inserted a jest on the Count's
courtship. "All men are equal before the pistol," said the Count; and
knowing that in that respect he was equal to most, having practised at
/poupees/ from the age of fourteen, he called out the son of Crispin and
shot him through the lungs. Another of Jasper's travelling friends was
an /enfant die peuple/--boasted that he was a foundling. He made verses
of lugubrious strain, and taught Jasper how to shuffle at whist. The
third, like Jasper, had been designed for trade; and, like Jasper, he had
a soul above it. In politics he was a Communist--in talk Philanthropist.
He was the cleverest man of them all, and is now at the galleys. The
fate of his two compatriots--more obscure it is not my duty to discover.
In that peculiar walk of life Jasper is as much as I can possibly manage.
It need not be said that Jasper carefully abstained from reminding his
old city friends of his existence. It was his object and his hope to
drop all identity with that son of a convict who had been sent out of the
way to escape humiliation. In this resolve he was the more confirmed
because he had no old city friends out of whom anything could be well
got. His poor uncle, who alone of his relations in England had been
privy to his change of name, was dead; his end hastened by grief for
William Losely's disgrace, and the bad reports he had received from
France of the conduct of William Losely's son. That uncle had left, in
circumstances too straitened to admit the waste of a shilling, a widow of
very rigid opinions; who, if ever by some miraculous turn in the wheel of
fortune she could have become rich enough to slay a fatted calf, would
never have given the shin-bone of it to a prodigal like Jasper, even had
he been her own penitent son, instead of a graceless step-nephew.
Therefore, as all civilisation proceeds westward, Jasper turned his face
from the east; and had no more idea of recrossing Temple Bar in search of
fortune, friends, or kindred, than a modern Welshman would dream of a
pilgrimage to Asian shores to re-embrace those distant relatives whom Hu
Gadarn left behind him countless centuries ago, when that mythical chief
conducted his faithfid Cymrians over the Hazy Sea to this happy island of
Honey.
[Mel Ynnys--Isle of Honey. One of the poetic names given to England
in the language of the ancient Britons.]
Two days after his rencontre with Arabella in the Green Park, the /soi-
disant/ Hammond having, in the interim, learned that Darrell was
immensely rich, and that Matilda was his only surviving child, did not
fail to find himself in the Green Park again--and again--and again!
Arabella, of course, felt how wrong it was to allow him to accost her,
and walk by one side of her while Miss Darrell was on the other. But she
felt, also, as if it would be much more wrong to slip out and meet him
alone. Not for worlds would she again have placed herself in such peril.
To refuse to meet him at all?--she had not strength enough for that! Her
joy at seeing him was so immense. And nothing could be more respectful
than Jasper's manner and conversation. Whatever of warmer and more
impassioned sentiment was exchanged between them passed in notes. Jasper
had suggested to Arabella to represent him to Matilda as some near
relation. But Arabella refused all such disguise. Her sole claim to
self-respect was in considering him solemnly engaged to her--the man she
was to marry.
And, after the second time they thus met, she said to Matilda, who had
not questioned her by a word-by a look: "I was to be married to that
gentleman before my father died; we are to be married as soon as we have
something to live upon."
Matilda made some commonplace but kindly rejoinder. And thus she became
raised into Arabella's confidence, so far as that confidence could be
given, without betraying Jasper's real name or one darker memory in
herself. Luxury, indeed, it was to Arabella to find, at last, some one
to whom she could speak of that betrothal in which her whole future was
invested--of that affection which was her heart's sheet-anchor--of that
home, humble it might be and far off, but to which Time rarely fails to
bring the Two, if never weary of the trust to become as One. Talking
thus, Arabella forgot the relationship of pupil and teacher; it was as
woman to woman--girl to girl--friend to friend. Matilda seemed touched
by the confidence--flattered to possess at last another's secret.
Arabella was a little chafed that she did not seem to admire Jasper as
much as Arabella thought the whole world must admire. Matilda excused
herself. "She had scarcely noticed Mr. Hammond. Yes: she had no doubt
he would be considered handsome; but she owned, though it might be bad
taste, that she preferred a pale complexion, with auburn hair;" and then
she sighed and looked away, as if she had, in the course of her secret
life, encountered some fatal pale complexion, with never-to-be-forgotten
auburn hair. Not a word was said by either Matilda or Arabella as to
concealing from Mr. Darrell these meetings with Mr. Hammond. Perhaps
Arabella could not stoop to ask that secrecy; but there was no necessity
to ask; Matilda was always too rejoiced to have something to conceal.
Now, in these interviews, Jasper scarcely ever addressed himself to
Matilda; not twenty spoken words could have passed between them; yet, in
the very third interview, Matilda's sly fingers had closed on a sly note.
And from that day, in each interview, Arabella walking in the centre,
Jasper on one side, Matilda the other--behind Arabella's back-passed the
sly fingers and the sly notes, which Matilda received and answered. Not
more than twelve or fourteen times was even this interchange effected.
Darrell was about to move to Fawley. All such meetings would be now
suspended. Two or three mornings before that fixed for leaving London,
Matilda's room was found vacant. She was gone. Arabella was the first
to discover her flight, the first to learn its cause. Matilda had left
on her writing-table a letter for Miss Fossett. It was very short, very
quietly expressed, and it rested her justification on a note from Jasper,
which she enclosed--a note in which that gallant hero, ridiculing the
idea that he could ever have been in love with Arabella, declared that he
would destroy himself if Matilda refused to fly. She need not fear such
angelic confidence in him. No! Even
Had he a heart for falsehood framed,
He ne'er could injure her."
Stifling each noisier cry--but panting--gasping--literally half out of
her mind, Arabella rushed into Darrell's study. He, unsuspecting man,
calmly bending over his dull books, was startled by her apparition. Few
minutes sufficed to tell him all that it concerned him to learn. Few
brief questions, few passionate answers, brought him to the very worst.
Who, and what, was this Mr. Hammond? Heaven of heavens! the son of
William Losely--of a transported felon!
Arabella exulted in a reply which gave her a moment's triumph over the
rival who had filched from her such a prize. Roused from his first
misery and sense of abasement in this discovery, Darrell's wrath was
naturally poured, not on the fugitive child, but on the frontless woman,
who, buoyed up by her own rage and sense of wrong, faced him, and did not
cower. She, the faithless governess, had presented to her pupil this
convict's son in another name; she owned it--she had trepanned into the
snares of so vile a fortune-hunter an ignorant child: she might feign
amaze--act remorse--she must have been the man's accomplice. Stung,
amidst all the bewilderment of her anguish, by this charge, which, at
least, she did not deserve, Arabella tore from her bosom Jasper's recent
letters to herself--letters all devotion and passion--placed them before
Darrell, and bade him read. Nothing thought she then of name and fame--
nothing but of her wrongs and of her woes. Compared to herself, Matilda
seemed the perfidious criminal--she the injured victim. Darrell but
glanced over the letters; they were signed "your loving husband."
"What is this?" he exclaimed; "are you married to the man?"
"Yes," cried Arabella, "in the eyes of Heaven!"
To Darrell's penetration there was no mistaking the significance of those
words and that look; and his wrath redoubled. Anger in him, when once
roused, was terrible; he had small need of words to vent it. His eye
withered, his gesture appalled. Conscious but of one burning firebrand
in brain and heart--of a sense that youth, joy, and hope were for ever
gone, that the world could never be the same again--Arabella left the
house, her character lost, her talents useless, her very means of
existence stopped. Who henceforth would take her to teach? Who
henceforth place their children under her charge?
She shrank into a gloomy lodging--she--shut herself up alone with her
despair. Strange though it may seem, her anger against Jasper was slight
as compared with the in tensity of her hate to Matilda. And stranger
still it may seem, that as her thoughts recovered from their first chaos,
she felt more embittered against the world, more crushed by a sense of
shame, and yet galled by a no less keen sense of injustice, in recalling
the scorn with which Darrell had rejected all excuse for her conduct in
the misery it had occasioned her, than she did by the consciousness of
her own lamentable errors. As in Darrell's esteem there was something
that, to those who could appreciate it, seemed invaluable, so in his
contempt to those who had cherished that esteem there was a weight of
ignominy, as if a judge had pronounced a sentence that outlaws the rest
of life.
Arabella had not much left out of her munificent salary. What she had
hitherto laid by had passed to Jasper--defraying, perhaps, the very cost
of his flight with her treacherous rival. When her money was gone, she
pawned the poor relics of her innocent happy girlhood, which she had been
permitted to take from her father's home, and had borne with her wherever
she went, like household gods, the prize-books, the lute, the costly
work-box, the very bird-cage, all which the reader will remember to have
seen in her later life, the books never opened--the lute broken, the bird
long, long, long vanished from the cage! Never did she think she should
redeem those pledges from that Golgotha, which takes, rarely to give
back, so many hallowed tokens of the Dreamland called "Better Days,"--
the trinkets worn at the first ball, the ring that was given with the
earliest love-vow--yea, even the very bells and coral that pleased the
infant in his dainty cradle, and the very Bible in which the lips, that
now bargain for sixpence more, read to some grey-haired father on his bed
of death!
Soon the sums thus miserably raised were as miserably doled away. With a
sullen apathy the woman contemplated famine. She would make no effort to
live--appeal to no relations, no friends. It was a kind of vengeance she
took on others, to let herself drift on to death. She had retreated from
lodging to lodging, each obscurer, more desolate than the other. Now,
she could no longer pay rent for the humblest room; now, she was told to
go forth--whither? She knew not--cared not--took her way towards the
River, as by that instinct which, when the mind is diseased, tends
towards self-destruction, scarce less involuntarily than it turns, in
health, towards self-preservation. Just as she passed under the lamp-
light at the foot of Westminster Bridge, a man looked at her, and seized
her arm. She raised her head with a chilly, melancholy scorn, as if she
had received an insult--as if she feared that the man knew the stain upon
her name, and dreamed, in his folly, that the dread of death might cause
her to sin again.
"Do you not know me?" said the man; "more strange that I should
recognise you! Dear, dear, and what a dress!--how you are altered! Poor
thing!"
At the words "poor thing" Arabella burst into tears; and in those tears
the heavy cloud on her brain seemed to melt away.
"I have been inquiring, seeking for you everywhere, Miss," resumed the
man. "Surely, you know me now! Your poor aunt's lawyer! She is no
more--died last week. She has left you all she had in the world; and a
very pretty income it is, too, for a single lady."
Thus it was that we find Arabella installed in the dreary comforts of
Podden Place. "She exchanged," she said, "in honour to her aunt's
memory, her own name for that of Crane, which her aunt had borne--her own
mother's maiden name." She assumed, though still so young, that title of
"Mrs." which spinsters, grown venerable, moodily adopt when they desire
all mankind to know that henceforth they relinquish the vanities of
tender misses--that, become mistress of themselves, they defy and spit
upon our worthless sex, which, whatever its repentance, is warned that it
repents in vain. Most of her aunt's property was in houses, in various
districts of Bloombury. Arabella moved from one to the other of these
tenements, till she settled for good into the dullest of all. To make it
duller yet, by contrast with the past, the Golgotha for once gave up its
buried treasures--broken lute, birdless cage!
Somewhere about two years after Matilda's death, Arabella happened to be
in the office of the agent who collected her house-rents, when a well-
dressed man entered, and, leaning over the counter, said: "There is an
advertisement in to-day's Times about a lady who offers a home,
education, and so forth, to any little motherless girl; terms moderate,
as said lady loves children for their own sake. Advertiser refers to
your office for particulars--give them!"
The agent turned to his books; and Arabella turned towards the inquirer.
"For whose child do you want a home, Jasper Losely?"
Jasper started. "Arabella! Best of creatures! And can you deign to
speak to such a vil---"
"Hush--let us walk. Never mind the advertisement of a stranger. I may
find a home for a motherless child--a home that will cost you nothing."
She drew him into the street. "But can this be the child of--of--Matilda
Darrell?"--
"Bella!" replied, in coaxing accents, that most execrable of lady-
killers, "can I trust you?--can you be my friend in spite of my having
been such a very sad dog? But money--what can one do without money in
this world? 'Had I a heart for falsehood framed, it would ne'er have
injured you'--if I had not been so cursedly hard up! And indeed, now, if
you would but condescend to forgive and forget, perhaps some day or other
we may be Darby and Joan--only, you see, just at this moment I am really
not worthy of such a Joan. You know, of course, that I am a widower--not
inconsolable."
"Yes; I read of Mrs. Hammond's death in an old newspaper."
"And you did not read of her baby's death, too--some weeks afterwards?"'
"No; it is seldom that I see a newspaper. Is the infant dead?"
"Hum--you shall hear." And Jasper entered into a recital, to which
Arabella listened with attentive interest. At the close she offered to
take, herself, the child for whom Jasper sought a home. She informed him
of her change of name and address. The wretch promised to call that
evening with the infant; but he sent the infant, and did not call. Nor
did he present himself again to her eyes, until, several years
afterwards, those eyes so luridly welcomed him to Podden Place. But
though he did not even condescend to write to her in the mean while, it
is probable that Arabella contrived to learn more of his habits and mode
of life at Paris than she intimated when they once more met face to face.
And now the reader knows more than Alban Morley, or Guy Darrell, perhaps
ever will know, of the grim woman in iron-grey,