The Denouement.
Then Basil Carruthers set himself busily to work to discover how he
might best undo the effects of his folly. The duties he had thought so
lightly of rose before him now.
"I will go down to Ulverston," he said to himself, "and with God's help
I will be a wiser and a better man."
He saw what his mistaken notions of chivalry had done for him--how
completely they had misled him--how near they had brought him to ruin
and disgrace. The meeting between mother and son was not the most
pleasant in the world. Lady Carruthers, stately, sensitive, and proud,
could not forgive the dark disgrace under which her son had lain. He saw
how deeply she felt it.
"Mother," he said, "you must judge me leniently. I own myself mistaken.
I think, sometimes, I must have been mad, I cannot tell you precisely
what took me to prison. Will you believe me that it was for a woman's
sake?"
"I knew it!" she interrupted.
"It was to screen a woman's folly," he continued. "And, indeed, wrong as
I was, I believed myself to be doing a most chivalrous deed."
"It is a great pity, Basil," said Lady Carruthers.
"Yes," he said, quietly; "but I was a woman's dupe, and I have suffered
enough. It was one false step, but I shall spend my life in trying to
redeem it."
He kept his word. In four years' time the name of Basil Carruthers rang
through the land with a pleasant sound; he had, indeed, found something
to do.
He was returned for the borough of Rutsford, and his fame as an able and
eloquent orator spread over the country.
Then he studied to become a model landlord; he built large, airy
cottages and schools; he paid the attention that every landlord ought to
pay that the land be well drained, well cultivated. He was a friend to
all his tenants, a benefactor to his dependants. In the course of time
people forgot to whisper there had been some story about Mr. Carruthers;
they only mentioned him in terms of praise. The very quality that his
mother once thought would be against him now proved to be in his favor.
If he was more romantic, more enthusiastic than other young men, he
employed the superabundance of his gifts to excellent purpose.
After some years there was a grand wedding at Ulverston. Basil
Carruthers won Marion Hautville for his wife. Before they were married
he took her one afternoon for a long ramble in the green summer woods
and told her this story. Marion was shocked at first; it seemed to her
impossible that a man could be so foolish as to mistake a deed like that
for chivalry.
"And what has become of your lovely Lady Amelie now?" she asked.
"She is still the queen of coquettes," replied Basil; "but, Marion,
although it was a terrible mistake, and I suffered so bitterly for it, I
cannot be altogether sorry that it happened. I should have been a
useless dreamer until the day of my death if this had not taken place.
It was a rude, rough, but sure awakening."
"I shall never call you my knight," said Marion. "Why, Basil, dear, a
schoolboy would not have been taken in by such nonsense."
"But, Marion, I was not so wise as a schoolboy," he replied.
"She only used you for her own purposes. She simply made a cat's-paw of
you, Basil."
"I can see it now, darling, I did not then. But you will forgive me,
Marion?"
"Yes; because, after all, though you were so greatly mistaken, still the
faults that led to your mistake were almost virtues."
Lady Carruthers was rendered very happy by her son's marriage. When Mrs.
Carruthers went to London, she proved to be Lady Amelie's greatest
rival. She was quite as beautiful, as witty, as clever, but in place of
coquetry, she was gifted with honest simplicity, that men pronounced
charming, while Lady Amelie, to her great chagrin, began to find her
attractions on the wane. Men grew tired of her vanity and her cruelty.
Women disliked her for her selfish disregard of everything but her own
triumph.
Basil Carruthers bows his head in shame and contrition when he remembers
this episode in his career. Then Marion, his wife, kisses him with a
smile, and tells him he is not much the worse for having been once upon
a time a coquette's victim.
THE END.
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End of Project Gutenberg's The Coquette's Victim, by Charlotte M. Braeme