So Kate Marsden married the cotton-spinner, and old Mr. Hazlehurst
repurchased his farm on very easy terms. We wonder which of the two was
best pleased with the bargain! Kate turned very pale when she promised
to love, honour, and obey a man whom she disliked, despised, and
intended to rule; nor do we wonder at it, for, with all her faults,
Kate perceived the intrinsic beauty of truth, and loved it, as she did
everything beautiful. But though she loathed herself for what she was
doing, though her bitterest enemy could not have taken a harsher view of
her conduct than she herself took, she had gone too far to retract, and
having swallowed the camel of crushing her own heart and that of Arthur
Hazlehurst, she could not stultify herself by straining at the gnat
of swearing falsely in the service for the solemnization of matrimony.
Kate’s was one of that peculiar order of consciences which can commit a
sin knowingly, on an emergency, but dare not be guilty of a blunder. In
the one case, the end appears to justify the means; while in the other,
the entire transaction is unworthy. Sophistry, Kate, sophistry! which,
while you think it, and act upon it, fails to satisfy even your warped
and distorted sense of right and wrong.
Kate Marsden married Mr. Crane--there was a union! On the one side youth
and beauty; intellect, lofty enough to have aimed at any achievement
which the mind of woman has accomplished; energy, sufficient to have
gained the object striven for; ambition, that when all was won would
have despised the trophies at her feet, and sighed for more worlds to
conquer; and a deep passionate nature, combining the fiery elements of
a southern temperament with the steady perseverance and inflexible
resolution characteristic of a daughter of the sturdy north: on the
other side, advancing age, mental weakness, timidity, and its natural
concomitant--suspicion, together with a general paucity of ideas,
centred in a vulgar pride of wealth. All Kate’s friends congratulated
her, and many envied her good fortune; and Horace D’Almayne smiled on
his future victim, as he surely reckoned her; and Arthur Hazlehurst sat
alone in his dusky chambers, with bitter thoughts busy at his heart,
struggling, like a brave and good man, against the tempting fiend that
bade him rise up and curse her who had thus rendered desolate his young
existence; and the minister of religion stood before the altar, and
pronounced his blessing over this hollow mockery of marriage, which no
amount of blessing could hallow; and the happy pair drove off to some
fool’s paradise to enjoy the honeymoon.
Poor Mr. Crane! if he had dreamed of the volcano of feeling that
smouldered at his side beneath that cold, calm exterior, he would
assuredly have flung open the carriage-door, sprung out (albeit not
accustomed to such feats of activity), and never ceased running until
he had reached Manchester. Fortunately, however, his wife’s mind was a
sealed book to him, and so he reached the end of his journey in peace
and safety.
Having borne the honeymoon with resignation, Kate endured her
bad bargain _tête-à-tête_ at various watering-places, and amongst
innumerable lakes and mountains of tourist notoriety, until she had
taught him the only accomplishment she cared to inculcate, viz.,
obedience, which he learned very readily, seeing that it relieved him
from all trouble and responsibility. This point accomplished, she took
him to a fashionable hotel in St. James’s Street, where she wrote to her
friend, Arabella Crofton, to join her. However, before that excellent
young woman of the world had time to wind up the ends of a few trifling
skeins of policy, with which she had been constructing nets for small
birds at Baden-Baden, Horace D’Almayne found out the residence of the
happy couple, and proceeded to call upon, dine with, and make himself
generally useful and agreeable to them. Kate did not like him, but
she had been for two months _tête-à-tête_ with Mr. Crane, and Horace
possessed this advantage over that devoted husband, that he was _not_ a
fool, and Mr. Crane was. Horace was not a fool; on the contrary, he was
such a clever knave that it was really a pity that he was not something
better: he saw the game he had to play, and he resolved to play it as
skilfully as his faculties and experience would enable him. He possessed
considerable insight into character, and sufficient tact to accommodate
himself to the peculiarities, and avail himself of the weaknesses, he
might thus discover. Accordingly, his first move was to endeavour to
lull Kate’s suspicions of him, which he saw had been aroused; his next
to make himself by degrees useful to her--necessary to her; then, let
him win her confidence on any subject (he would have been delighted if
she had told him the day of the month, or that she had dropped a pin, in
_confidence_, for it would have been a beginning), until by word, look,
or sign, she admitted her indifference towards her husband, and then the
game would be his own.
With Mr. Crane D’Almayne’s course appeared very simple. The
millionaire’s one clear idea was the omnipotence of wealth; he knew
D’Almayne was poor, and that he had lent him money which he never
expected to be repaid. He considered him in the light of a sort of
Master of the Ceremonies, who could guide him in the ways of fashionable
life, whereof he felt his ignorance--a kind of upper upper-servant--the
Vizier to his Caliphship, and he lent him money as a delicate way of
paying his wages. At present D’Almayne was in high favour with Mr.
Crane; his wife was looking very handsome, quite a gem of a wife--equal
to his pictures or his port wine; D’Almayne had negotiated his marriage
for him, and the speculation had been a successful one; he lent
D’Almayne £500 before he had been in town a week. Horace saw it all, but
he was not proud; as he would have said, “It suited his book too well,”
so he pocketed his wages meekly.
“My dear Kate, can you amuse yourself for a couple of hours or so alone?
D’Almayne and I are going to look at a pair of carriage-horses--a--I
shall bring him home to luncheon, and--a--now I think of it, I asked him
to dine here and go to the concert at the Hanover Square Rooms with us
afterwards;” and having thus unfolded his programme for the day, Mr.
Crane glanced timidly towards his wife, to learn whether it would
receive her sanction and approval. There was a moment’s silence, and
then in a low, musical voice, Kate replied coldly--
“I have letters to write this morning, so the arrangement will suit me
perfectly. If the horses are fine ones, I hope you will buy them.”
Mr. Crane stroked his chin (a habit in which he indulged when anything
pleased him) and smiled. His wife was satisfied with him--happy man! But
he had stroked his chin rather prematurely, for, in the same cold tone,
Kate resumed--
“There is one point on which I am anxious clearly to understand you. Is
it your wish that Mr. D’Almayne should virtually live with us? because,
that he will do so, unless some decided measures are taken to discourage
him, is self-evident.”
This was a straightforward and uncompromising way of putting the case
which slightly discomposed poor Mr. Crane.
D’Almayne was, as we have said, eminently useful to his patron, so much
so, that at that precise epoch the good gentleman would have been sorely
puzzled how to get on without him; but the more he acknowledged this in
his secret soul, the less did he desire that any one, and especially his
young wife, should perceive it.
“Well, my dear Kate,” he began, “you see Mr. D’Almayne has turned his
attention to points which, engaged as I have been for many years in
commerce, I have never found time or opportunity to render myself
acquainted with.”
“In fact, he has made himself necessary to you,” interposed Kate.
“No, my dear, no--by no means necessary--not at all so; but that he is
useful, very useful to me, I confess. I am sorry to perceive that you
have taken up a slightly unreasonable (if I may be permitted to say so)
prejudice against this young man.”
“You are mistaken,” returned Kate, calmly. “I am perfectly indifferent
to him. If it is your wish to make use of him, he will of course be
here constantly; but as you have so kindly yielded to my desire that my
friend, Miss Crofton, should reside with us, his presence or his absence
will make little difference to me--only, if at any future time you
should hear comments on the intimacy, you will remember that I have
admitted it solely to gratify you.”
Mr. Crane, propitiated by this concession, and by the grounds on which
Kate had placed it, was endeavouring to stroke some form of thanksgiving
out of his chin, when the door opened, and the subject of their
conversation was shown in. After a few desultory remarks, Horace,
turning to Mr. Crane, observed--
“I called at the house-agent’s in my way here, and have obtained the
particulars of two houses which it will be quite worth your while to
look at; one is in Belgrave Square, the other in Park Lane.”
As he spoke, Kate raised her head and fixed her large eyes upon his
face; but he appeared unconscious of having deserved her scrutiny, and
was quietly examining some memoranda he had written on the back of a
card, regarding the number of rooms and other particulars respecting the
houses. So perfectly unconscious was his manner, that for once Kate’s
penetration was at fault. She remembered having on one occasion, months
before, at the Grange, mentioned in his presence that if she went to
live in London she should prefer either Belgrave Square or Park Lane for
her residence; but whether _he_ also had recollected this, or whether
his selection was the result of accident, she could not decide.
Moreover, it was not easy for her to determine how to act in the matter.
If he had made the selection intentionally, and she allowed it to pass
unnoticed, it would be a sort of tacit admission that she was willing to
receive such secret attentions from him, appreciating them as kindnesses
rather than resenting them as impertinences; while, on the other hand,
if by any chance it was a mere coincidence, she was unwilling to afford
him even the minute triumph of perceiving that she felt sufficient
interest in him to remember whether or not he had been present on an
occasion, since which several months had elapsed, or that she cared to
know if he had observed, or regarded her wishes. So she took a middle
course, and, availing herself of a pause in the conversation, inquired
carelessly--
“Where did you say the houses were situated, Mr. D’Almayne?” On
obtaining the information she required, she added, “And how came you to
select those particular localities?”
As he turned to reply, their glances met, but his face was perfectly
inscrutable.
“If, as your tone implies, they do not meet your approval, my dear
Mrs. Crane, we need take no farther trouble in regard to them,” was his
ambiguous reply. “I chose them because I fancied situations so generally
popular might not be displeasing to you.”
Kate was again foiled, and D’Almayne, as he quietly observed it,
muttered inwardly, “Won the first trick, at all events!”
Mr. Crane, leaving the room to put on his great-coat, a precaution
without which he was most careful not to stir from home, D’Almayne
observed,--
“You would prefer bay carriage-horses to grey, or any more conspicuous
colour, would you not?”
Surprised at his having thus discovered her taste, Kate was so far
thrown off her guard as to exclaim,--
“How in the world do you know that?”
Horace smiled a quiet smile.
“I reasoned from analog,” he said; “your dress is always rich and
striking, but never showy; and the effect is produced by its consistency
as a whole.”
Kate involuntarily returned his smile; tact and keen intelligence were
qualities she highly appreciated.
“You are a close observer,” she said, “and shall be rewarded by learning
the interesting fact that I _do_ prefer bay horses to those of any other
colour.”
Before the week was over, Mr. Crane had purchased a magnificent pair
of bay carriage-horses, and had taken a lease of a noble mansion in Park
Lane. The only fault Kate could discover in either, was the conviction
forced upon her that it was to the agency of Horace D’Almayne she was
indebted for them.