A COMMERCIAL CRISIS.
The private theatricals at the Cedars were postponed till Christmas, and
in the middle of November Mr. Hillary removed his household to a big
bow-windowed habitation at the western end of Brighton. Francis
Tredethlyn followed, as in duty bound, and spent a great portion of his
life in hurrying to and fro between London and Brighton by express
trains. Never had a better adorer done suit and service to a mistress.
There were no lovers’ quarrels, no temporary estrangements between these
two people. A serene and cloudless sky heralded the coming splendour of
their union, and Maude declared again and again that she had never seen
such a model pair of lovers.
“Harcourt and I were always quarrelling, you know, Julia,” she said;
“but then we were both such horribly jealous creatures. I didn’t like
his turning over music for other girls; though I suppose he was right,
poor fellow, and a man must either turn over music or shut himself from
society altogether. And he didn’t like my going down to dinner with
people in crack cavalry regiments; but I’m afraid we rather enjoyed
ourselves when we quarrelled, and I used to feel as if it would be the
easiest thing in the world to part from him for ever, and go into a
convent, or marry somebody I hated, or something of that kind; and then
directly we _had_ parted, I used to get so silly and miserable, and used
to write him such penitent letters, taking all the blame upon myself,
and making an idiot of him. But it’s so nice to see you and Mr.
Tredethlyn, and I’m sure he’ll be the dearest husband in the world,
Julia, and you’ll be able to twist him round your little finger.”
It was not with a feeling of unalloyed pleasure that Miss Desmond
accepted her friend’s congratulations. She was quite ready to admit that
Francis Tredethlyn was a model lover, and promised to be the most
submissive husband that ever bowed himself before a clever wife’s
dominion. His presents were munificent, his attention was unfailing, his
temper serenely even; and yet there were times when Julia Desmond felt
that all was not quite as it should have been.
She had angled very successfully, and the fish she had landed was a
splendid prize, victoriously snatched from all other anglers; but Oh,
what a difference there is between that poor deluded fish, entrapped out
of the free waters by the cruel hook of the angler, and the willing bird
which flies, of its own loving impulse, to the breast where it fain
would shelter!
Julia Desmond knew that, in securing a husband, she had not won for
herself a lover; and the knowledge pained and humiliated her. It was a
small thing that she should not love Francis; but it seemed very hard
that Francis should not love her. Her womanly tact would have stood in
the place of affection, and she would have been lavish in the
expenditure of a spurious coin, in the way of pretty words and tender
looks, which should have had all the glitter and some of the vibration
of the real mintage. But with Francis it was altogether different. The
young man had no power to simulate; and there was a deadly coldness in
his wooing that chilled the proud Irish girl’s heart.
“Are they worth the humiliation?” she thought sometimes, when she
contemplated her diamonds before the lighted glass in her bedroom at
Brighton. “They are very big and brilliant and costly; but I’ve seen
myself look handsomer with a scrap of scarlet ribbon twisted in my hair,
than I look to-night with all these stars and crosses and serpents
flashing and twinkling about me. And then, when I go down stairs, I must
go through all the old stereotyped business; and when I thank him for
the flowers that he sent me this morning, he will look at me with his
cold eyes, and tell me he is pleased to have given me pleasure. What is
he but a clod--a mere clod, nothing but a clod? I ought to remember
that; and yet I am angry with him because he does not love me. Why can I
not be thankful for my good fortune, and accept my future husband for
what he is,--a respectable, well-behaved ploughman, whom an accident has
endowed with thirty thousand a year?”
Perhaps Miss Desmond did not particularly care to answer that question
which she put to herself in so impatient a spirit. And yet it was a
question that might have been answered, had she cared to fathom the
lower deeps of her own mind. But then there _are_ questions which are
better left unanswered. Why was she angry with Francis Tredethlyn for
that passionless serenity of manner which was so nearly akin to
indifference? Why? unless it was because in her own heart there lurked
the consciousness that the unpolished Cornishman _might_ have been a
very different kind of lover; and that beneath his cold exterior there
were slumbering embers which might have blazed into glory had one
special torch been applied to them.
Yes, Julia knew this, and the knowledge was a perpetual poison that
embittered the wine of success. The pride of the Desmonds had not been
entirely trodden out beneath the iron heel of poverty. This girl, who
had not been too proud to set herself to ensnare a rich husband, was yet
proud enough to feel the bitterness of her degradation.
“If he only loved me,” she thought, “I should feel that the bargain was
a fair one. But to know that, at best, he only submits to the force of
circumstances! He has been drifted into the position of a lover, and he
performs the duties exacted of him; just like some non-dancing man who
has been persuaded to dance in order to fill the last place in a
quadrille, and who dawdles listlessly through the figures, and almost
yawns in the face of his partner. And yet I have seen him look at _her_
until the dull clay of which he is made seemed to change into a thing of
life and fire.”
And then Miss Desmond was fain to turn to her new jewel-case for
consolation, and to beguile her mind from unpleasant thoughts by the
consideration of all those grand things that may be done with thirty
thousand a year.
If the young ladies of the household thought it a pleasant thing to
spend the brief November afternoons on that delightful esplanade beside
the sea, Mr. Hillary did not find a residence in Brighton so entirely
convenient. A great deal of his time was spent in journeyings to and fro
by the best and quickest express train in England: and there were days
when even the facilities of a Brighton railway would not enable the
merchant to take his dinner in the society of his beautiful daughter and
her companion. There were occasions on which the two girls sat for a
wearisome hour or so, trying vainly to amuse themselves by some feminine
occupation, or to beguile the time by some feminine discourse, while the
soup grew cold and the Brightonian cook grew angry; and then at last
were fain to sit down at nine o’clock, and make a dismal pretence of
dining without the head of the household.
“I sometimes think so much railway travelling must be bad for papa,”
Maude said. “I am afraid it must shake him a little; though riding in
the Brighton express is almost as good as sitting in one’s own room. I
fancy papa has not looked so well lately. I have begged him to see Mr.
Desborough, our Twickenham doctor, or some London physician; but it’s no
use, for he won’t listen to me. I can’t tell you how uneasy I am about
him, Julia. He has had so many of his bad headaches lately; and then he
says the business in Moorgate Street has been so heavy. Ah, Julia! what
is the good of being rich, if papa must work as he does?”
Miss Desmond shrugged her shoulders.
“Business men seem scarcely to exist out of their offices,” she said,
rather scornfully. She always took care to let Maude know that she
looked down upon the Twickenham splendour and its commercial sources. “I
dare say your papa will devote himself to money-making as long as he
lives.”
“I sometimes think we might have been happier if we had been poorer,”
Maude said, dreamily, by-and-by. “I can’t help fancying how we might
have lived in some quiet country place, in a low-roofed, old-fashioned
cottage, with a garden all round it and a churchyard close by, and the
smell of cows and the cooing of pigeons; and then I need not have been
separated from----.” She did not finish the sentence; she was talking to
herself rather than to Julia. Her face was beautified by an
inexpressible softness and tenderness as she murmured that broken
sentence. Her thoughts wandered back to the time in which she and
Harcourt Lowther had sworn eternal constancy, standing with their hands
locked together in the dim summer twilight, on the bank of the shadowy
river. She thought of that time, and all the freshness of feeling that
had gone down with it came back upon her suddenly, like a breath of air
from a distant ocean. How frivolous her life had been since then!--how
selfish and useless! What a round of dress and decoration, and hurry and
weariness! Harcourt Lowther’s last letter was in her pocket as she sat
musing despondently by the hired Brighton hearth;--his last letter, a
most melancholy epistle, full of despairing lamentations about the
bitterness of separation and the hardships of Van Diemen’s Land. And
over and above all these feminine perplexities which tormented poor
loving Maude, there seemed real cause for anxiety in the state of Mr.
Hillary’s health. It was not that the merchant himself complained; he
did not complain, and, indeed, appeared to resent any inquiries as to
his state, even when those inquiries came from such a privileged person
as his only child. But every morning at the breakfast-table, sitting
opposite to her father in the bright sunlight, Maude could see a darker
shade under Mr. Hillary’s eyes, a more weary look about his haggard
face. She defied his anger very often, and pleaded earnestly with him,
imploring him to consult a physician; but his answer was always very
much the same.
“I am subject to this sort of headache; my work in Moorgate Street is
peculiarly hard just now. Pray do not trouble yourself, Maude; there is
not the least occasion for any uneasiness about my health.”
With such assurances as these Miss Hillary was compelled to be
satisfied. There had been an air of coldness, or almost displeasure, in
her father’s manner to her lately, and Maude found to her surprise that
he was by no means pleased with the matrimonial engagement that had
arisen between Julia Desmond and Francis Tredethlyn.
“Engaged to _her_!” the merchant exclaimed, when his daughter carried
him the news of Julia’s conquest,--“engaged to Julia Desmond! Why, I
fully believed that he came to Twickenham on your account, Maude. I said
nothing to you about the matter, because girls have sometimes such
absurd notions, and I thought it better to let things take their course.
And so Julia has entrapped him, has she? I ought to have been on my
guard against Ryan O’Brien Desmond’s daughter.”
“How can you talk like that, papa?” cried Miss Hillary. “I’m sure Julia
and Mr. Tredethlyn are really in love with each other, and dear Julia is
perfectly disinterested. And then, if Mr. Tredethlyn had been ever so
much in love with me--and I’m sure he never cared the least bit about
me--how could you suppose that I could ever dream of marrying him; when
I--when he’s such a very common kind of person?”
Harcourt Lowther’s name had been almost trembling on Miss Hillary’s
lips, but she had remembered her father’s aversion to that name, and had
modified the conclusion of her sentence in deference to his prejudice.
“A very common kind of person!” repeated Lionel Hillary, in a thoughtful
tone; “yes, yes, my dear, I dare say he is, I dare say he is. But I’ve
seen women as beautiful as you married to commoner men than Francis
Tredethlyn.”
And then, after a brief silence, the merchant’s manner changed all of a
sudden; he took his daughter in his arms, and pressed his lips upon her
forehead with an almost passionate fondness.
“My darling! my darling!” he cried, “do you think it wouldn’t please me
to see you married to a man you could love?”
Maude looked up into his face with a sweet smile upon her own: her lips
parted, and in the next moment Harcourt Lowther’s name would have been
spoken and his cause pleaded by those innocent lips. But it seemed as if
her father in a manner anticipated what she would have said; for he put
her from him suddenly, and turned away with a faint shiver of pain.
“I am very sorry to hear of this engagement between Julia and that young
man,” he said, with his face averted from his daughter, and his hands
nervously shuffling among the papers on the table before him. “I am very
much vexed. There, go, Maude; you don’t understand, you can’t
understand. Go, my dear; I’m busy.”
No more than this had ever been said between the father and daughter
upon the subject of Miss Desmond’s matrimonial arrangements; but Maude
had been able to discover that her father’s vexation was not a matter of
the moment, to be forgotten and done with after the first surprise of
the announcement. Lionel Hillary was tolerably gracious to Mr.
Tredethlyn, but his manner towards Julia changed altogether. There were
times when he scarcely took the trouble to conceal his displeasure from
that young lady herself. He would sit watching her moodily when Francis
Tredethlyn was by her side, and would sometimes, when the conversation
gave him an opening, break out into some cynical generality upon the
husband-hunting propensities of modern young ladies. Francis was too
simple-minded to comprehend the drift of these covert sneers; but Julia
understood her benefactor, and defied him with her bold handsome eyes
and her flashing teeth.
“He wanted thirty thousand a year for his daughter, I suppose,” she
thought, when she pondered on Mr. Hillary’s discourtesy. “What grasping,
avaricious creatures these rich people are!”
Christmas was approaching, and that festival period was to be spent at
the Cedars, to which place Maude Hillary was tenderly attached, despite
her sentimental talk about poverty and a simple home deep down in the
heart of rustic England. The young ladies’ portmanteaus had been packed
ready for the departure from Brighton, and Maude and Julia only waited
for Mr. Hillary to escort them on their homeward journey. He had not
been so much with them during the last week or so of their sojourn: and
as Francis Tredethlyn only came backwards and forwards with Mr. Hillary,
the girls had been left by themselves, with no better occupation or
amusement than the reading of new books, the trying of new music, and a
contemplation of the blusterous gray waves beating eternally before
their windows: for the weather had been cold and stormy of late, and the
delicious esplanade had been deserted; only an occasional masculine
wanderer, out for a “constitutional,” buffeted the winds and strode in
dismal loneliness along the pavement beneath Mr. Hillary’s windows.
It was only natural, under these circumstances, that the young ladies
should have grown weary of Brighton. They had a close carriage at their
disposal; but then driving through perpetual tempest is not particularly
agreeable even in a close carriage. They went shopping in East Street
two or three times during the severe weather, and bought expensive
materials for impossible complications of Berlin-wool work and gold
beads; and, experimentalizing with the same on their return home,
discovered themselves at sea in a wide ocean of perplexity. Thus it was
that they grew very tired of Brighton, and wished most earnestly for Mr.
Hillary’s coming.
“Oh, for the silvery ring of my own Broadwood!” exclaimed Maude, as she
rose from a struggle with a German rendering of “Polly, put the kettle
on,” in seven flats, and ten pages of double arpeggios. “I wonder _who_
makes the pianos for houses that are let furnished? I’m sure they must
all be made by the same man; and I suppose it’s a theory of his own that
makes him always use damp wood, and put so much flannel into his
trebles.--I wish papa would come and take us home, Julia.”
Miss Hillary expressed this wish at least twenty times in a day; and
Julia echoed it, as if out of pure sympathy. But Miss Desmond was not a
very sympathetic person, and she was really anxious to get back to the
neighbourhood of London and Francis Tredethlyn. Nearly a fortnight had
passed since the Cornishman had been to Brighton, and Julia was terribly
conscious that the link which united him to her was very fragile, and
might be broken by any unlucky hazard--unless, indeed, his constancy
were sustained by a chivalrous sense of honour. She had as yet had no
opportunity of discovering his sentiments on this subject, and she had a
vague idea that a small farmer’s son, who had taken the Queen’s
shilling, would be unlikely to entertain the same splendid notions of
truth and loyalty that glowed in the breasts of his superiors.
“I know that he’s a very good fellow,” Julia thought; “and I don’t
suppose he would steal anything, or tell a deliberate falsehood; but I
dare say he would think it no sin to throw me over at the last moment
if----”
There was a point at which Miss Desmond’s reveries always stopped short.
She did not care to think about that which Francis Tredethlyn might like
to do, even if he were free to do as he liked.
Mr. Hillary came home very late upon the evening of an especially
disagreeable day. He came down to Brighton by the mail train, and
arrived at the hired mansion just as the two girls were gathering
together the gold beads and Berlin wools, preparatory to going to bed.
But though the merchant had been so much longer away than usual, he
seemed in no particular hurry to embrace his daughter; for instead of
coming up to the drawing-room, he walked straight to a dreary little
study at the back of the house, which had been set apart for his use.
Maude had heard the sonorous knock at the big street door, and flew out
of the drawing-room to greet the traveller.
“At last, dear papa!” she cried. “We have been as dull and dreary as a
pair of Marianas in a moated grange. Oh, you darling papa! I am so glad
you have come! Please take us home to Twickenham: we’ve had _such_
weather; we’re as helpless and miserable as those poor working people
who go about singing so dreadfully flat when there’s a hard frost. ‘We
are two lonely single girls, and we’ve got no work to do!’” sang Miss
Hillary, with the established nasal drawl, as she skipped down the
stairs.
“Kiss me, you wet, cold, melancholy-looking papa,” she said, planting
herself between Lionel Hillary and the door of his sanctum.
The merchant seemed in no very affectionate humour to-night. He put his
daughter aside without looking at her. His face was fixed and stern in
expression, and its gloomy rigidity was in no way relaxed as he spoke to
Maude.
“Why are you up so late?” he said. “I thought you would have gone to bed
an hour ago. I don’t want to be worried to-night, Maude. I’ve some
papers down here that want looking into, and I’ve brought other papers
with me. I may have to sit up half the night, perhaps; and, remember, I
am not to be disturbed.”
“But you will be ill, papa, if you work so hard.”
“I shall not be ill, and I know what is best for myself. I cannot and
must not be annoyed to-night, Maude.”
He went into his room, where the servant had already made an
illumination that would have been enough for a chapel or a factory, by
means of five flaring gas-burners; but Maude followed him, and was not
to be put off even by the harsh words that sounded so strangely in her
ears.
“Papa,” she remonstrated piteously, “I am sure that you are ill, or that
something has happened.”
Mr. Hillary laid his hand upon his daughter’s shoulder, and put her out
of the room,--very gently, but with a certain determination which was
quite a new thing in his treatment of this idolized and exacting Maude.
“I tell you, once more, that I am going to be--very busy, and must
not--be disturbed.” He seemed tired, for the words came slowly, as if
the mere utterance of them were a painful exertion. “Good night, my
dear; go to bed, and sleep peacefully. God bless you, and take you into
his keeping!”
His manner changed all in a moment as he said this, and he caught her
suddenly to his breast and kissed her passionately, as he had done on
that other day when they had talked of Francis Tredethlyn.
But in the next moment Maude found herself standing outside the closed
door of her father’s retreat, amazed and unhappy. That sudden little
gush of affection had been as perplexing to her as Mr. Hillary’s unusual
sternness of manner. It was all alike strange; and vague fears agitated
her as she went slowly up-stairs to the big barren drawing-room, which
looked very little more home-like than a first-class waiting-room at a
railway station.
Julia had disappeared, and the flaring gas-lamps illumined a great
barren desert of Brussels carpet and emptiness. Dear Julia always
remembered that her good looks were her only dower, and took care not to
waste them by late watching in the glare of many gas-burners. Maude
sighed as she looked round the empty room, and then seated herself at a
table adorned with a gaudy cover that looked like a small Turkey carpet.
She took up the impossible Berlin-wool work, and the gold beads, and set
herself to the task of counting tiny dots and squares on a coloured
paper pattern, with a view to discovering where the Berlin-wool left off
and the beads began. But she was tired and unhappy, and the bewildering
dots and squares made her head ache; so she pushed away the work
presently, and roamed restlessly up and down the room: now stopping by a
table, and taking up a book, only to open it haphazard and stare blankly
at the pages; now lingering by the piano, noiselessly fingering the
notes, and tormented with a wild desire to dash into some blusterous
march that should startle the slumbering household.
Her father had told her to go to bed. He was going to work very late,
and must on no account be disturbed. He had worked late sometimes at
Twickenham, but not often; and on those occasions Maude had gone to
sleep happily enough, only a little disturbed by the thought of “poor
papa” toiling over those cruel business documents. But to-night it was
altogether different. At the risk of incurring her father’s anger, Miss
Hillary paced wearily up and down the desert of Brussels carpet, waiting
till she should hear the merchant’s step on the stairs, and know that
his night’s work was over.
She waited, oppressed by a vague uneasiness, and wondering why she was
uneasy. Why was it that to-night the thought of her father’s toil
mingled with all manner of strange fears and misgivings? She was usually
so frivolous, so apt to look brightly put upon the sunnier aspects of
the world around her; but to-night her heart seemed like a leaden weight
in her breast. What was it? why was it? The cheap French clock upon the
chimney-piece struck some abnormal number between twelve and twenty, and
a distant church clock struck two; but still Miss Hillary waited in vain
for that expected step upon the stair. Her father had said that he would
be very late, but she had hoped that at the worst his work would be
finished in a couple of hours. The time seemed so intolerably long to
Maude Hillary, roaming in a purposeless manner about that big room, or
standing in the bay-window to listen to the hoarse roaring of the waves,
or sitting down to read for five minutes together, but never once
knowing what she was reading.
There had been so few troubles in her life, and looking back at the
smooth sunlit ways by which she had wandered from childhood to
womanhood, she was seized all at once with a fear that there must be
some great grief in store for her. It was quite impossible that she
could have altogether withheld herself from some contemplation of that
startling question as to her right to be happy in a world where so many
people were miserable; but the question had never intruded itself upon
her so awfully as to-night.
“I have never had sickness, or death, or sorrow near me,” she thought.
“My mother died before I was conscious of her existence--as I think--and
yet it seems strange that there can be any time when a child is
unconscious of a mother’s presence, or heedless of her loss. The worst
trouble that I can remember is my parting from Harcourt; and I have
always hoped that all would come right at last. But to-night--to-night I
feel as if there had been something sinful in my happiness. The sermons
I have heard at church never came home to me. I never felt that I was a
miserable, sinful creature, groping my way upon a thorny path. I’m
afraid I have been very wicked; selfish and idle, vain and frivolous.”
Looking back at her life, Miss Hillary saw an existence of Twickenham
pleasure, water-parties, and pic-nics, Star-and-Garter dinners,
perpetual Parisian bonnets, and turquoise bracelets, pet dogs, new
novels, opera-boxes, and concert-tickets. Perhaps she had never before
watched and waited alone at these still hours of the dead winter-night,
and these unusual thoughts may have been only the natural companions of
her loneliness.
She looked at her watch a dozen times in an hour, and at last, when it
was nearly three o’clock, her patience was exhausted all at once, and
she resolved on going down to her father’s room.
“He will be very angry with me for sitting up so late,” she thought,
“but I _cannot_ go to bed until I have seen him. It will be better to
see him ever so cross with me than not to see him at all.”
Having once arrived at this determination, Maude Hillary ran down stairs
and tapped lightly at her father’s door. There was no answer, and she
repeated that timid tapping. Again there was no answer, and she tried
the handle of the door, intending to steal softly in and surprise the
merchant at his work. But the door was locked, and her breath grew thick
with the sudden oppression caused by some vague terror. She lost all
command over herself, and knocked loudly, calling in a frightened voice,
“Papa! papa!”
It was not so strange that she should be frightened. How often she had
heard of hard-working City magnates suddenly stricken down in the prime
of life by some fell disease, unsuspected until that last fatal moment!
A heavy footstep inside the little room relieved her of these vaguely
terrible fears. The door was opened, and Mr. Hillary stood before her,
very pale, very angry. “Maude! how absurd this is! What have you been
doing? Why have you been sitting up?”
“Because somehow I _couldn’t_ go to bed while you were working down
here, papa darling. I couldn’t; I didn’t want to worry you or disobey
you; but I don’t know what’s the matter with me to-night. All manner of
ridiculous things came into my head, and I felt that I _must_ see you
before I went to sleep. Let me come in, papa.”
She pleaded so prettily, looking up in her father’s face with such
tender devotion beaming in her own, that Lionel Hillary must have been
something harder and sterner than the stoniest of mercantile men if he
had been deaf to her pleading.
“Come in if you like, Maude,” he said, with a weary sigh; “I am sorry
that you disturbed me. I had very nearly finished my work.”
The littered mass of papers that had been scattered on Mr. Hillary’s
desk when Maude had left him were gone now, and only a few neat little
packets remained in their stead. But, placed conspicuously upon the
desk, Maude perceived a big envelope with a great red seal, and lying
near it a smaller envelope also sealed.
The merchant had removed his neckcloth. He seemed to have been working
hard, for big drops of moisture stood upon his forehead. A great basket
near his chair was filled to overflowing with torn scraps of paper, and
the shower of waste had fallen far and wide, and lay like snow about the
chair in which Mr. Hillary had been sitting.
“Now, Maude,” he asked sternly, as his daughter followed him into the
room, “what is it that you want with me?”
“Why, to see you leave your work and go to bed, papa. You don’t know how
late it is.”
The merchant smiled a grim smile, and pointed to his watch, which lay
open on the desk.
“I’ve been working against time, and I’ve kept watch upon every quarter
of an hour,” he said.
“But you have finished now, papa.”
“Not quite. I have very nearly finished--but not quite.”
Miss Hillary shook her head with a pretty petulant gesture. She was not
in the least afraid of her father’s anger now. She had been so tortured
by dim and shadowy apprehensions, that her spirits rebounded suddenly
now that she was by her father’s side, and she was bold enough to defy
him.
“I shan’t leave you any more to-night, papa. If you had all the business
of the Stock Exchange to transact, I wouldn’t let you sit up any longer,
ruining your health by brooding over those tiresome papers. Besides,
your desk is quite clear; you seem to have done everything.”
“No, I have not done everything.”
Mr. Hillary had resumed his seat, and was staring absently at the desk
before him, where all things looked so neat and orderly that Maude
seemed justified in thinking that her father’s work was done. There was
a row of drawers on each side of the desk. One of them was open, and a
bunch of keys hung from the lock. A copy of the _Times_ newspaper lay
across the top of this open drawer; but as Miss Hillary hung about her
father, some portion of the silken flounces or furbelows of her dress
brushed against the paper, and it fell rustling to the ground. Lionel
Hillary turned suddenly with a look of alarm directed towards the open
drawer, and Maude, following his glance, saw something lying among the
neat packets of letters and papers,--something which had no business to
be there; something which seemed to realize a greater terror than any
that her fancy had shaped, however dimly, during those hours of weary
waiting in the room above.
The object which seemed so terrible to Maude Hillary was a pistol--a
small pistol, of very modern fashion, fresh and bright from the hands of
the gunmaker. Mr. Hillary was not a man who affected the gunsmith’s art,
and Maude had never seen such a weapon in her father’s possession until
to-night;--until _this_ night, when vague fears respecting him had been
so long busy in her brain, only wanting a form into which to shape
themselves.
It seemed as if her frivolous girlhood left her all at once. It seemed
as if that great terror, coming upon her with such ghastly suddenness,
transformed her into a woman--a woman possessed of woman’s highest
attributes, fortitude, and self-abnegation. She uttered no cry of alarm,
no exclamation of surprise; but she suddenly closed and locked the
drawer in which the pistol lay, and dropped the bunch of keys into her
pocket. Then kneeling down beside her father’s chair, she put her arms
tenderly about him, and laid her head upon his breast. Mr. Hillary had
grown very passive all at once, and sat idly staring at the table before
him.
“Papa,” Maude said presently, in a low, pleading voice, “what is it?
tell me, confide in me. In whom should you trust, if not in me? What is
it, papa? what does it mean?”
“It means--ruin!” the merchant answered, huskily. He did not turn
towards his daughter, but still sat staring blankly straight before him.
“It means failure and ruin, Maude; ruin in its worst shape, its most
hideous shape.”
“You mean that we shall be poor, very poor--that we shall have to leave
Twickenham--that you will be a clerk perhaps in some office, and I a
daily governess. I remember when the Gordons failed, and poor Constance
Gordon and her brothers had to begin the world afresh, without money,
and with very little help from their old friends. Do you think I could
not bear as much as that, and be happy still, if you were with me? Ah,
papa, papa, do I seem to you such a helpless, useless creature, that you
shrink from trusting me at such a time as this?” Hysterical sobs rose in
her throat, but she stifled them, and went on talking to him in the same
quiet tender voice, and caressing him as she talked. He submitted
passively enough to her caresses, but he seemed scarcely conscious of
them.
“Trust me, papa; tell me everything. Such troubles as these seem so much
less dreadful when once they have been freely spoken of. I remember how
Mr. Gordon kept everything hidden from his family as long as he could;
and Constance told me that it seemed as if a great cloud was hanging
over the house, and there was something in the atmosphere that stifled
them all. But when the crash came at last, they bore it bravely; and see
how well they have got on ever since, in a moderate way. Ah, papa, you
have brought me up like a spoiled child, or a princess in a fairy tale;
and now that trouble has come to us, you think I can’t bear it. But I
_can_, papa; if you will only be brave, your foolish, extravagant
daughter will learn to be wise and patient. I was getting very tired of
Twickenham, papa; and shall be as happy as the day is long in a nice
little cottage in some cheap suburb, where I can have pupils.”
Lionel Hillary ought no doubt to have been comforted by his daughter’s
tenderness; but unhappily there are some wounds so cruelly inflamed,
that the gentlest application the surgeon can devise is apt to chafe and
irritate them. The girl’s talk jarred upon the merchant’s mind, and it
was with a shiver of pain that he turned to her as she left off
speaking.
“Child, child!” he exclaimed, fretfully, “you don’t know what you’re
talking of. Do you think it is such an easy thing to pass from one of
the first positions in the City to a clerkship and a cottage in the
suburbs? Do you think there is nothing _between_ such opposite
conditions? Do you suppose I have only to shut up my books, and wish my
creditors good morning, before I walk out of my office! You talk and
think like a child, Maude. It is all very well for an old twaddler like
John Gordon, who suspends payment upon the first failure that affects
his stability, and who winds up his affairs with a dividend of fifteen
shillings in the pound, and the compliments and sympathy of all
Basinghall Street. No one will sympathize with _my_ fall, though more
than I can count will suffer with me. I am not a man to drop under the
first blow, Maude; for nearly three years I have been working a rotten
ship, with the knowledge that nothing short of a miracle could save me
from wreck. The wreck has come. The world will call me a dishonest man,
because I waited for that miracle. I waited as the gambler waits at the
green table, hoping that the last risk would bring me salvation. With me
ruin means disgrace. I tell you, Maude, before the month is out, there
will be a panic in the City, and men will cry out that Lionel Hillary is
a rogue and a swindler. There’s not a man who ever dined at Twickenham
that won’t use his knowledge of my home as a weapon against me. There’s
not a bottle of wine I ever gave a friend whose price and quality will
not be made a reproach against me. Oh! I know how people talk about
these things. Go away, child! Your presence only goads and irritates me.
It reminds me that I might have done better than I have done; I might
have been wiser, I might have saved something--my good name at least. I
have loved you so dearly, Maude,--Heaven only knows how dearly, for I am
no man of big words or sentimental phrases. And now I leave you utterly
destitute, the pauper child of a disgraced father.”
“But you shall not leave me,” cried Maude, with a sudden energy that
startled Lionel Hillary. “Papa, why do you insist upon treating me as a
child? Why do you judge me by what I have been, rather than by what I
can be? Why won’t you trust me? why won’t you talk to me as if I were a
son, and had a right to share your secrets? You have told me the worst,
and you see I can bear to know it. I can endure even disgrace; but I
cannot bear to lose you. Trust me, papa. I will be patient under any
calamity except----” She was seized with a sudden shivering, and clung
to him with a convulsive force in the small hands that entwined
themselves about his arm. “You know what I mean, papa,” she said.
“Believe that I can bear anything if you will be true and brave and
patient. And even yet the miracle may come. Something may happen at the
very last, surely it may, to save your good name.”
Mr. Hillary pressed his daughter’s hand in acknowledgment of so much
tenderness and devotion; but he shook his head moodily as he answered
her, “Nothing _can_ happen to save me, unless twenty thousand pounds
drop from the skies between this and the 10th of January.”
Twenty thousand pounds! Maude’s thoughts flew to her jewel-case, in
obedience to the most universal of feminine instincts. Twenty thousand
pounds! Alas for that birthday gift of opals and diamonds, the turquoise
rings and bracelets, the emerald cross, the delicate pink coral, and all
the fragile fantastic toys of gold and enamel, bought in the dearest
market of elegant West-end dealers, who give three years’ credit. Maude,
in all her ignorance, was wise enough to know that these things would
not realize one of the twenty thousands required by her father.
“But there is Twickenham, papa,” she said; “the Cedars must be worth
ever so many thousands.”
“And is mortgaged to the full extent of its value,” answered Mr.
Hillary. “Find me twenty thousand pounds, if you can, Maude; but don’t
worry me with frivolous suggestions. I tell you that it is quite
impossible for a woman to understand my position. God help me! I
scarcely understand it myself. I only know that everything round me is
so much rottenness, and that the crash _must_ come next month.”
“But you will not think--of that--again!” urged Maude, pointing to the
drawer.
“No; I’ll wait to the tenth.”
“For _my_ sake; Oh, papa, for my sake!”
“No, child; not for your sake, but from a selfish, cowardly clinging to
life,” cried Lionel Hillary, with sudden passion. “It would be better
for you, ten times better, if I were dead. The thought of that was in my
mind as I came down here to-night, until the noise of the engine almost
seemed to thump out the words, ‘Better for her, better for her.’ People
would have mercy upon you if I were dead, Maude; even those who suffered
by me would be less bitter in their reproaches if I were dead. A man can
only break his heart once; and when the man is dead, there is no mark
for the arrows of justifiable reproach, or the foul garden-stuff and
rotten eggs of malicious calumny.”
“Papa, the help may come; the twenty thousand pounds may be found.”
“No, child; there was only one hope of that, and the hope is gone.”
For the first time that night Mr. Hillary looked at his daughter; she
saw the look, an anxious scrutiny that sent a chill through her heart.
She did not ask him what that one hope had been.
“Papa, trust in me, only trust in me!” she cried; “you do not know of
what I am capable for your sake--for your sake. You don’t know what I
have suffered to-night, and how changed I am by that suffering. Hope for
a miracle even, papa: keep things as smooth as you can, and between this
and the tenth the twenty thousand pounds may be found. Only tell me one
thing. You don’t want anyone to _give_ you the money. If it were lent to
you, you could repay it by-and-by?”
“Yes; with sufficient time I could repay it.”
“Then hope for the miracle, papa. Ah! you think me such a child that you
are almost angry with me for telling you to hope; but the lion laughed
at the mouse, I dare say.”
Five minutes after this, Miss Hillary led her father to his room, and
wished him good night, cheerfully enough, upon the threshold. But under
that pretence of cheerfulness, cruel fears and perplexities were
torturing her innocent heart. Ruin, dishonour, disgrace; the misery of
many homes besides that one household on the bank of the river,--all
these terrors had come very suddenly upon the girl who only that morning
had been impatient of the December weather and the dull gray sky.
She went to her room; but only to sit with the door open, listening for
any sound in her father’s apartment, which was next her own. She sat for
nearly two hours shivering with cold, and then crept softly to her
father’s room and opened the door. The merchant was sleeping, peacefully
enough to all appearance, for his breathing was tranquil and regular; so
Maude went back to her room. It seemed the bitterest mockery to go to
bed; but then Miss Hillary’s maid would have been scandalized had she
come at eight o’clock and found her mistress still watching. Alas, poor
Maude; for the first time in her life she had to submit to that most
cruel social penance, entitled “keeping up appearances.” She went to
bed; and though she seemed to hear every hour, and half-hour, and
quarter of an hour chimed by the church clocks, she must have slept at
some time or other in that brief remainder of the night, or else how
should she have been tormented by those hideous dreams, in which she was
always wading through black morasses and turgid waters, carrying in her
arms a great bag of gold, which she vainly strove to convey to her
father?
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