FOLLY.
There is no misfortune on earth so great as that of a troubled
conscience: there is nothing that will wear the spirits and the frame
like a burdensome secret which may not be told. It will blanch the
cheek and sicken the heart; it will render the day a terror and the
bed weary; so that the unhappy victim will be tempted to say with Job:
When shall I arise and the night be gone? He is full of tossings to
and fro unto the dawning of the day: his sleep is scared with dreams
and terrified with visions.
Had Mrs. Oscar Dalrymple been of a different temperament, this unhappy
state of mind would have been hers. But she had no very deep feeling.
Troubled in a degree she undoubtedly was. That terrible secret, the
debts she had incurred, lay on her mind always in a greater or a less
degree; for she knew that when her husband paid them he would be half
ruined; certainly crippled for years to come.
Another season had come round and was at its height; and Mr. and Mrs.
Dalrymple had again come up to it. The past autumn and winter had been
spent at Moat Grange, which Selina found insufferably dull, and where
her chief solace and recreation consisted in looking over her
beautiful and extensive wardrobe, and trying on portions of it in
private. A very negative sort of enjoyment. Where was the use of
possessing these divine dresses and adjuncts, when no field was
afforded for their display? Selina had ventured to wear one costly
robe on a certain evening that she dined at Court Netherleigh, and was
severely taken to task by her mother, who was the only other guest,
and by Miss Upton, for appearing in such "finery." They asked her what
she meant by such extravagance. And that before Oscar, too! Selina
blushed a little and laughed it off; but she mentally wondered what
would have been said had she put on her very finest, or if they saw
the stock at home.
During the winter Selina had a fever, brought on, it was thought, from
exposing herself unduly to damp. She grew better, but was somewhat
delicate and very capricious. Oscar, loving her intensely, grew to
humour her fancies and to pet her as if she were a spoiled child. Her
conscience reproached her now and then for the tacit deceit she was
enacting, in thus suffering him to live in blissful ignorance of their
true position; but on the whole it did not trouble her greatly. Alice,
her sensitive sister, would have died under it; Selina contrived to
exist very comfortably.
"If you found out that I had done anything dreadfully wrong, would you
quite kill me?" she playfully said to him one day.
"Dare say I should," answered Oscar, putting on a face of mock
severity. "Might depend, perhaps, upon what the thing was."
"Ah, no; you'd just scold me for five minutes, and then kiss and be
friends. I always said you'd never turn out to be an old griffin."
That was the nearest approach Selina ever made towards confessing to
her husband. And Oscar had only looked upon it as a bit of passing
pleasantry.
Alice Dalrymple had left her mother's house to become companion to
Lady Sarah Hope. During a week's visit that Colonel Hope and his wife
made to Miss Upton in the autumn--it was soon after they had got into
their new house in London--Alice had also been staying at Court
Netherleigh. One day Lady Sarah chanced to say she wished she could
find some nice young gentlewoman, who would come to her in the
capacity of companion: upon which Alice said, "Would you take me?"
"Ay, and be glad to get you," returned Lady Sarah, supposing that
Alice had spoken in jest. Alice, however, was in earnest. She could
not bear to be living on the charity of Oscar Dalrymple, for she
shrewdly guessed that Selina threw as much expense on him as he could
well afford; and Alice quite believed that her mother, devoted to the
care of her poultry, her birds, and her flowers, would not miss her.
So the bargain was struck. "And please remember, Lady Sarah, that I
come to you entirely as companion, prepared to fulfil all a
companion's duties, and not merely as a visitor," Alice gravely said;
and she meant it.
Selina was vexed when she heard of the arrangement. She went straight
down to her mother's cottage, and upbraided Alice sharply. "It is
lowering us all," she said to her. "A companion is next door to a
servant; every one knows that. It will be just a disgrace to the name
of Dalrymple."
"Very well, Selina; then, as you think that, I will drop the name,"
returned Alice. "I was christened Alice Seaton, you know, after my
godmother, and I will be called Miss Seaton at Lady Sarah's."
"Stuff and nonsense, child!" retorted Selina. "You may call yourself
Seaton all the world over, but all the world will know still that you
are Alice Dalrymple."
Alice entered upon her new home in London, and gravely told everybody
in it that she wished to be called by her second name, Seaton. Lady
Sarah laughed, and promised to humour her as often as she could
remember to do it.
In December, Colonel Hope had formally adopted his nephew, Gerard. The
young man threw up his post in the red-tape office (not at all a wise
thing to do), and took up his abode with his uncle. They all went down
to the colonel's place in Gloucestershire to spend Christmas,
including Frances Chenevix, who almost seemed to have been as much
adopted as Gerard, so frequently was she staying with them. Christmas
passed; they came to London again, and things went on smoothly and
gaily until just before Easter, when a fracas occurred. Gerard Hope
contrived in some way to offend the colonel and Lady Sarah so
implacably that they discarded him; frequent growls had ended in a
quarrel. Gerard was insolent, and the colonel, hot and peppery, turned
him out of the house. They went again into Gloucestershire for Easter,
Alice with them as companion and Frances as a guest; but not Gerard.
In fact, so far as one might judge, he was discarded for ever.
The cause was this: Lady Sarah, detecting the predilection of her
sister Frances for the young man, and believing that he was equally
attached to her, went out of her way and her pride to offer her to
him. Gerard had refused it point blank. No wonder Lady Sarah was
angry!
The sweet month of June came round again, and the London
season, as I have said, was at its height. Amidst those who were
plunging headlong into its vanities was Selina Dalrymple. She had
coaxed and begged and prayed her husband to give her just another
month or two of it this year, assuring him she should die if he did
not. And Oscar, though wincing at the cost, knowing well he could not
and ought not to afford it, at length gave in. It appeared that he
could deny her nothing. The expenses of the previous season were far
more than he had expected, and as yet he had not been able to
discharge them all. Apart, this, from his wife's private expenses, of
which he as yet remained in ignorance.
It may be questioned, however, whether Selina enjoyed this second
season quite as much as she had the last. The visit and the gaiety and
the homage were as captivating as ever, but she lived in a kind of
terror; for Madame Damereau was pressing for the payment of her
account. If that came to Oscar's knowledge, he would not only do to
her, she hardly knew what, perhaps even box her ears, but he would be
quite certain to carry her forthwith from this delightful London life
to that awful prison, Moat Grange, at Netherleigh.
One afternoon, Oscar was turning out of his temporary home in Berkeley
Street--for they had the same rooms as last year--when he saw coming
towards him a young lady who walked a little lame. It was Alice
Dalrymple.
"Ah, Alice!" he cried. "Have you come to London?"
"Yes," she replied. "Lady Sarah is better, and we left Gloucestershire
yesterday to join the colonel here: he has been writing for us for
more than a week past. Is Selina at home?"
"She is, for a wonder. Waiting for somebody she intends to go out
with."
"How is she?"
"I cannot tell you how she is. Rather strange, it seems to me."
"Strange!"
"Take my arm, Alice, and walk with me a few paces. There's something
the matter with Selina, and I cannot make it out," continued Mr.
Dalrymple. "She acts for all the world as if she had committed some
crime. I told her so the other day."
"Acts in what way?" cried Alice.
"She's frightened at her own shadow. When the post used to come in at
the Grange she would watch for the boy, dart down the path, and seize
the letters, as if she feared I might read the directions of hers.
When she was recovering from that fever, and I would take her letters
in to her, she more than once became blanched and scared. Often I ask
her questions, or address remarks to her, and she is buried in her own
thoughts, and does not hear me. She starts and moans in her sleep;
twice lately I have awakened in the middle of the night and found her
gone from the bed and pacing the dressing-room."
"You alarm me," exclaimed Alice. "What can it be?"
"I can only suppose that her nerves are overwrought with all these
follies she is plunged into. It is nothing but turmoil and excitement;
turmoil and excitement from day to day. I was a fool to come here
again this year, and that's the truth."
"Selina had always led so very quiet a life," murmured Alice.
"Of course she had; and it has been a wonderful change for her; enough
to upset the nervous system of a delicate woman. Selina has not been
too strong since she had that fever."
"She ought to keep more quiet."
"She ought; but she will not. Before we came up I told her she must
not do as she did last year; and I thought she did not mean to. Alice,
she is mad after these gay frivolities; worse than she was last
summer, I do believe--and that need not be. I wished not to come; I
told Selina why--the expense, and other reasons--but she would. She
would, Alice. I wonder what it is that chains her mind to this Babel
of a city. I hate it. Go you in and see her, Alice. I can't stay now,
for I have an appointment."
Mrs. Dalrymple was in her bedroom when Alice entered, dressed, and
waiting to go out: dressed with an elegance regardless of expense.
"Good gracious, child, is it you!" she exclaimed.
When the first moments had passed, Alice sat down and looked at her
sister: her cheek was thin, and its bloom told more of hectic than of
health.
"Selina!" exclaimed Alice, "what is the matter? You are much altered."
"Am I? People do alter. You are altered. You look ill."
"Not more so than usual," replied Alice. "I grow weaker with time But
you are ill: I can see it. You look as if you had something preying on
your mind."
"Nonsense, Alice. You are fanciful."
"What is it?" persisted Alice.
"If I have, your knowing it would do me no good, and would worry you.
And yet," added Mrs. Dalrymple, "I think I will tell you. I have felt
lately, Alice, that I must tell some one!"
Alice laid gentle hold of her. "Let us sit down on the sofa, as we
used to sit together at the Grange, when we were really sisters. But,
Selina, if you have wanted a confidant in any grief, who so fitted to
be that as your husband?"
"He!" cried Selina--"_he!_ It is the dread of his knowing it--the
anxiety I am in, daily and hourly, to keep it from him--that is
wearing me out. Sometimes I say to myself, 'What if I put an end to it
all, as Robert did?'"
Alice was accustomed to the random figures of speech her sister was at
moments given to using; nevertheless her heart stood still.
"What is it that you have done, Selina?"
"Ruined Oscar."
"Ruined Oscar!"
"And ruined myself, with him," added Selina, in reckless tones, as she
took off her bonnet with a jerk, and let it lie in her lap. "I have
contracted debts that neither he nor I can pay, thousands upon
thousands; and the worry of it, the constant fear is rendering my life
a--I will not _say_ what--upon earth."
"Debts! thousands upon thousands!" confusedly uttered Alice.
"It is so."
"How did you contract them? Not as--as--Robert did? Surely that
infatuation is not come upon you?"
"No. But that infatuation, as you call it, is in fashion in our
circles just now. I could tell you of one young lady, whom you know,
who amuses herself with it pretty largely."
"A young lady!"
"She is younger than I am--but she's married," returned Selina: and the
young lady in question was the Lady Adela Grubb. "My embarrassment
arises from a love of pretty gowns," she added lightly; for it was not
possible for Selina Dalrymple to maintain a tragic mood many minutes
together. "Damereau's bill for last season was between three and four
thousand pounds. It is between four and five thousand now."
Alice Dalrymple felt bewildered. "It is not possible for one person to
owe all that for one year, Selina!"
"Not possible?" repeated Mrs. Dalrymple. "Some of my friends spend
double--treble--four times what I do."
"And so their example led you on?" cried Alice, presently, waking up
from a whirlpool of thought.
"Something led me on. If one is in the world, one must dress."
"No, Selina: not as you have done. Not to ruin. If people have only a
small income they dress accordingly."
"And make a sight of themselves. I don't choose to."
"Better that, and have peace of mind," remarked Alice.
"Peace of mind! Oh, I don't know where that is to be found nowadays."
"I hope you will find it, Selina. How much do you say you owe?"
"There's four thousand to Damereau, and----"
"Who is Damereau?"
"Goodness me, Alice; if you never did spend a season in town, you
ought to know who she is, without asking. Madame Damereau's the great
milliner and dressmaker; every one goes to her."
"I remember now. Lady Sarah has her things elsewhere."
"Then I owe for India shawls, and lace, and jewels, and furs and
things. I owe six thousand pounds if I owe a farthing."
"What a sum!" echoed Alice, aghast. "Six thousand pounds!"
"Ay, you may well repeat it! Which of the queens was it who said that
when she died the name of Calais would be found engraven on her heart?
Mary, I think. Were I to die, those two words, 'six thousand,' would
be found engraven on mine. They are never absent from me. I see
them written up in figures in my dreams; I see them always; in the
ball-room, at the opera, in the park they are buzzing in my ears; when
I wake from my troubled sleep they come rushing over me, and I start
from my bed to escape them. I am not at all sure that it won't turn
out to be seven thousand," candidly added Mrs. Dalrymple.
"You must have dressed in silver and gold," said poor Alice.
"No: only in things that cost it: such things as these," said Mrs.
Dalrymple, pulling at her bonnet with both hands in irritation so
passionate that it was torn in two.
"Oh, pray! pray!" Alice interposed, but too late to prevent the
catastrophe. "Your beautiful bonnet! Selina, it must have cost three or
four guineas. What a waste!"
"Tush!" peevishly replied Mrs. Dalrymple, flinging the wrecks to the
middle of the room. "A bonnet more or less--what does it matter?"
Alice sat in thought; looking very pained, very perplexed.
"It appears to me that you are on a wrong course altogether, Selina.
The past is past; but you might strive to redeem it."
"Strive against a whirlpool," sarcastically responded Selina.
"You are getting deeper into it: by your own admission, you are having
new things every day. It is adding fuel to fire."
"I can't go naked."
"But you must have a large stock of dresses by you."
"Do you think I would appear in last year's things? I can't and I
won't. You do not understand these matters, Alice."
"Then you ought not to 'appear' at all. You should have stopped at the
Grange."
"As good be in a nunnery. Once you have been initiated into the
delights of a London season, you can only come back to it. Fancy my
stopping at that mouldy old Grange."
"What is to be the end of all this?" lamented Alice.
"Ah, that's it! The End. One does not know, you see, how soon it may
come. I'd not so much mind if I could get all the season first. The
torment of it is, that Damereau is pressing for payment. She is
throwing out hints that she can't supply me any longer on credit--and
what on earth am I to do if she won't? What a shame it is that there
should be so much worry in the world!"
"The greatest portion of it is of our own creating, Selina. And no
worry ought to have the power very seriously to disturb our peace,"
the younger sister continued, in a whisper.
"Now, Alice, you are going to bring up some of those religious notions
of yours! They will be lost upon me. One cannot have one's body in
this world and one's heart in the next."
"Oh yes, we can," said Alice, earnestly.
"Well, I don't suppose I am going into the next yet, unless I torment
myself out of this one; so don't go on about it," was Selina's
graceless reply. But as Alice rose to leave, her mood changed.
"Forgive my fractiousness, Alice; indeed, you would excuse it, if you
only knew how bothered and miserable I am. It makes me cross with
myself and with other people."
"Ma'am," interrupted Ann, Mrs. Dalrymple's maid, "Lady Burnham is at
the door, waiting for you."
"I am not going out today," answered her mistress, rising. "I have
changed my mind."
"Oh, my patience!" uttered the maid. "What's this? Why, ma'am, it's
never your bonnet?"
No man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre: I fear the same may be said
of woman. "Bother the bonnet," was the undignified reply of Mrs.
Dalrymple, as she flirted the pieces further away with her foot. Ann
humbly followed them to the far-off corner, and there took them into
her hands. "Reach me another bonnet," said her mistress; "I think I
will go, after all. What's the use of staying indoors?"
"Which bonnet, ma'am?"
"Oh, I don't know! Bring some out."
An array of bonnets, new and costly, were displayed for Mrs.
Dalrymple's difficult choice. Alice, to whom all this was as a
revelation, took her departure with uplifted hands and a shrinking
heart.
Mrs. Dalrymple went downstairs, and took her seat in Lady Burnham's
carriage. The latter, an extremely wealthy woman, full of pleasurable
excitement, imparted some particulars she had learnt of the marriage
festivities about to be held in a family of their acquaintance, to
which they were both invited. Lady Burnham was then on her road to
Damereau's to order a suitable toilette for it--one that would eclipse
everybody's but the bride's. Selina, in listening, forgot her cares:
when carried out of herself by the excitement of preparing for these
pomps and vanities, she generally did so forget. But only then. In the
enacting of the pomps and vanities themselves, when they were before
her in all their glory, and she made one of the bedizened crowd, her
nightmare would return to her; the skeleton in the closet would at
those festive times, be exceeding prominent and bare. The reader may
be a philosopher, a grave old F.R.S., very learned in searching out
cause and effect, and so be able to account for this. I am not.
Selina's mouth watered as she listened to Lady Burnham's description
of what she meant to wear at the wedding, and what she recommended to
Selina: and the carriage stopped at Madame Damereau's. Mrs.
Dalrymple's orders were quite moderate today--only amounting to about
ninety pounds.
Was she quite silly? the reader will ask. Well, not more so than many
another thoughtless woman.
Madame Damereau took the order as politely and carefully as though
Mrs. Oscar Dalrymple had been made of bank notes and gold. She knew
better manners--and better policy, too--than to make any objection
before others of her clientèle. But that same evening, when Selina was
dressing, she was told that a lady who gave the name of Cooper wished
to see her. Selina knew that there was a Mrs. Cooper in the
establishment of Madame Damereau, a partner, she fancied, or
book-keeper; something of that sort. She had seen her once or twice; a
lady-like woman, who had been reduced.
"Let Mrs. Cooper come up here," she said to the maid. And Mrs. Cooper
entered the bedroom.
"I come from Madame Damereau's," she began, taking the chair that
Selina pointed to. "She hopes----"
"For goodness' sake, speak low!" interrupted Selina, in ill-concealed
terror. "Mr. Dalrymple is only in his dressing-room, and I do not wish
him to hear all my private affairs. These London walls are thin. She
wants money, I suppose."
"She hopes, madam, that you will make it convenient to let her have
some," said Mrs. Cooper, sinking her voice to a whisper. "If it were
only a few hundred pounds," she said. "That is trifling compared with
the whole sum, which amounts now to----"
"Oh, I know what it amounts to; I can guess it near enough," hastily
interposed Mrs. Dalrymple. "In the course of a week or two I will see
what I can do."
Poor Selina, at her wits' end for excuses, had said "in the course of
a week or two" so many times now, that Madame Damereau was tired of
hearing the phrase.
Mrs. Cooper hesitated, not much liking her errand. "She bade me say,
madam, that she was extremely sorry to cause inconvenience, but that
she cannot execute the order you gave today unless she previously
receives some money."
"Not execute it!" repeated Selina, with flashing eyes. "What do you
mean by saying such a thing to me?"
"Madam, I am but the agent of Madame Damereau. I can only speak as she
bids me."
"True," answered Selina, softening; "it is not your fault. But I must
have the things. You will get them for me, will you not?" she said, in
an accent of entreaty, feeling that she was speaking to a gentlewoman,
although one who but held a situation at a milliner's. "Oh, pray use
your influence; get her to let me have them."
Mrs. Cooper stood in distress, for hers was one of those refined
natures that cannot bear to cause or to witness pain.
"If it depended upon me, indeed you should have them," she answered,
"but I have no influence of that sort with Madame Damereau. She would
not allow the slightest interference between her and her ladies: were
I to attempt it, I might lose my place in her house, and be turned out
again to struggle with the world."
"Has it been a harsh world to you?" inquired Selina, pityingly.
"Oh yes," was Mrs. Cooper's answer, "or I should not be where I am
now. And I am thankful to be there," she hastily added: "I would not
seem ungrateful for the mercy that has followed me in my misfortunes."
"I think misfortunes are the lot of all," spoke Selina. "What can I do
to induce Madame Damereau to furnish me with these things?"
"Perhaps you had better call and see her yourself, madam," replied
Mrs. Cooper, relapsing into her ostensible position. "I will try and
say a word to her tonight that may prepare her. She has a good
heart."
"I will see her tomorrow. Thank you," replied Mrs. Dalrymple, ringing
for Mrs. Cooper to be shown out.
Selina finished dressing, and went forth to the evening's gaiety with
what spirits she had. Once plunged into the gay scene, she forgot care
and was merry as the merriest there. Her husband had never seen her
face brighter.
On the following day, Selina proceeded to Madame Damereau's at an
early hour, before any of the other clientèle would be likely to
appear. But the interview, although Mrs. Cooper had said as much as
she dared, was not productive of good. Madame had gradually learnt the
true position of Oscar Dalrymple, that he was a very poor man, instead
of a rich one; she feared she might have trouble over her account, and
was obstinate and obdurate. Not exactly insolent: she was never that,
to her customers' faces: but she and Mrs. Dalrymple both lost temper,
and the latter was impolitic enough to say some cutting things, not
only in disparagement of madame's goods, but about the "cheating
prices" she had been charged. Madame Damereau's face turned green, and
the interview ended by her stating that if some money was not
immediately furnished her, she should sue Mr. Dalrymple for the whole.
Selina went away sick at heart; for she read determination on the
incensed lips of the Frenchwoman.