“And I wish the present subject may never drop till the work is done,” interposed Herbert Gresham, joining the conversation with a suddenness, and speaking with such startling eloquence, that it caused a general retreat of individual opinion. He would have been amused had he felt less interested, to see the effect on both sexes of his unexpected interference. He spoke very briefly, for he was too disgusted with the littleness, the selfishness, of all he had heard to attempt anything like argument. And the effort to excuse former sentiments—to dare say he was right, but they had not reflected much about it—thought it a pity to alter things which had been going on so long—could not understand, even granting there was a good deal of misery, how could it be helped, but if Herbert Gresham thought it might be, no doubt there was more in it than they believed, and very many other similar speeches, only excited his contempt.

We must change the scene, for our space will not allow us more than a slight sketch: a momentary glance, as it were, on things passing daily, hourly around, and yet seen, known of, by how few! Four or five days after Lady Gresham’s fÊte, Miss Neville might have been seen entering one of those small, close, back streets, found even in the aristocratic west, and whose dilapidated dwellings present almost as great a contrast with the proud mansions which surround and conceal them as the inhabitants themselves.

It was a poor old needlewoman whom Lucy was visiting, and, surprised at finding her usual sitting-room empty, and fearing she was ill—for there was no sign of work about, and Mrs. Miller was infirm and ailing—she gently entered her sleeping apartment. The rough bed was occupied indeed, but not by its usual inmate, who was sitting by its side, tears rolling down her withered cheeks, and her attention so fixed that she did not perceive Miss Neville’s entrance. She was watching the painful, restless movements of a girl, who, in a high state of delirium and fever, was lying on the pallet; she was very young, and had been beautiful, but suffering had scarcely left any trace but its own. Earnestly and pityingly, Lucy entered into the sad, but only too common tale, her inquiries elicited; but the old woman’s narration being garrulous and unfinished, we will give it in our own words.

Fanny Roberts and Harry Merton, born and nurtured in the same village, had been playmates, schoolfellows, friends, and at last lovers—not only faithful and affectionate, but prudent and thoughtful. The parents of both were poor, even in their humble village, but the wishes and interests of their children were their first object, and to see them somewhat higher in the world than themselves their sole ambition. To set up an establishment in the neighbouring town, combining linen-draper, dressmaker, and milliner, had been their day-dream from the time they had conned their school lessons and taken long walks together, instead of joining their playmates on the green; and to fulfil this earnest wish, their parents, by many sacrifices, which, measured by their love, seemed absolutely nothing, gathered together sufficient to send them to London, and apprentice them there. Harry was then nineteen and Fanny two years younger. Hope was bright for both. Their only drawback seemed the impossibility of meeting more than once a week; and six days of entire separation was a weary interval to those accustomed to exchange affection’s kindly words and looks each day. Only too soon, however, did the oppressive reality of the present absorb the rosy hues of the future. On the daily routine of unmitigated work, the exhausting labour, the deadened energies, the absorption of every faculty in the depressing weariness, we need not touch. It was no distaste for work, for both had set to their respective duties with hearts burning to conquer every difficulty—to do even more than was required of them, the sooner to gain the longed-for goal; and had it not been for the fearful burden of over-work, the absence of sufficient rest, of all wholesome recreation, how brightly and nobly might these young loving beings have walked the path of life, by mutual exertion creating a home, and all the joys, which, in England that one word speaks! Alas! ere eighteen months elapsed, every thought of buoyancy and joy seemed strangely to have deserted Fanny. She could not tell why, for outward things seemed exactly the same as they had been at first. Harry was still faithful, still fond. Her heart intuitively felt that he was altered. Why, she would often ask herself, could she no longer feel happy? Why should every thought of her own dear home cause such a sickly longing for fresh air and green fields, that the hysteric sob would often rise choking in her throat, and more than once, nothing but a timely burst of incomprehensible tears had saved her from fainting as she sat. She could not satisfy herself; but in reality it was the silent workings of insidious disease, seeming mental, because impossible to be traced as physical, save by the constant sensation of weariness, which she attributed merely to sitting so long in close and crowded rooms; but though happiness seemed gone, she retained the power of endurance; woman can and will endure, but in nine cases out of ten, men cannot. In the one, suffering often purifies; in the other, it but too often deteriorates.

Harry Merton had entered on his work joyfully and buoyantly, determined to make the best of everything, and be good friends with everybody. Naturally lively, with the power of very quick acquirement, and a restless activity of mind as well as body, a very few months’ trial convinced him that if he had not entirely mistaken his vocation, he certainly must do something to make it more endurable. He had heard of institutions for the people in London, of amusements open even to the most economical; he had pictured enjoying them with his Fanny, and gaining improvement likewise. He found it all a dream. There were, indeed, such things, but not for him or her. The hour of his release found not only every wholesome amusement closed, but himself so weary, that mental recreation was impossible, and yet with the yearning for some pleasure, some relief from wearisome work, so natural in youth, stronger than ever. His convivial, unsuspecting disposition led him to join the most seemingly attractive, but in reality the most dangerous, of his companions. The consequences need scarcely be narrated. He became intemperate, gay, reckless, looking back on the pure, fresh feelings of his early youth with wonder, and retaining but one of their memories, his love for Fanny; but even that was no longer the glad, hopeful feeling which it had been. He was constantly told, and he saw, that it must be years before they could marry. He was laughed at for imagining that either he or she would retain their early feelings. He heard her beauty admired, and then pitied as a most dangerous gift, which must eventually and most fearfully separate her from him; and the most furious but most unfounded jealousy took possession of him, and so darkened every hour of meeting, that poor Fanny at length anticipated them with more dread than pleasure. It was long, indeed, nearly three years, before things came to such a crisis; but the gradual conviction of the deterioration of her lover’s character was to Fanny the heaviest suffering of all: that she still loved him, surely we need not say. She saw the circumstances of this miserable change, not the change itself. Her woman’s heart clung to him the more, from the very anxiety he inspired. So intensely did she mourn for his long, wearisome hours of joyless toil, that she scarcely felt her own; though, when he was released at ten or eleven, she was often working unceasingly till two in the morning. The choking cough, the shortened breath, the aching spine, she scarcely felt, in the one absorbing thought of him.

Whenever she could be spared, which in the “season” was very seldom, it was Fanny’s custom to go to Mrs. Miller (her only friend in London) Saturday night and remain till Sunday evening. Two or three days before the invitations were out for Lady Gresham’s fÊte, a note was given to her from Harry, the perusal of which occasioned deeper suffering than anything she had yet endured. Snatching half an hour from the scanty time allowed for sleep, the following was her reply:—

“Harry! Harry! this from you! when you so fondly promised you would never doubt me more! Yes, he did seek me that Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, for it was one o’clock; and I would not have gone there, had you not made me promise that I would not disappoint you, and that you would take me home. Why were you not there? Why did you leave me to the chance of such a meeting? And then upbraid me with putting myself in that bad man’s way! Oh, Harry! Harry! by the memories of our early home, our early love, spare me such unjust suspicion! You tell me writing will not satisfy you, you must see me, hear from my own lips my version of this cruel and most false tale. How can I see you till Saturday night, the earliest, if then? Sunday if I can only crawl to Mrs. Miller’s, indeed I will come, pain as it is now to move. Only trust me till then, dearest, dearest Harry. Do not add to your burden and mine by thoughts like these. You know that I am innocent; that I never have loved, never can love, any one but you.”

The Sunday came, but Fanny was unable to keep her engagement. Madame Malin was so overwhelmed with orders for Lady Gresham’s fÊte, that even the Sabbath day was compelled to be sacrificed. The peculiar trimmings which it was absolutely necessary for Miss Balfour to have to complete the Parisian costume (the details of which never arrived till eleven o’clock, Saturday, and then all the materials had to be purchased) were Fanny’s work; and, from her delicate taste, she, of all the assistants, could the least be spared. In fact, extra hands were hired; for to complete twenty or thirty full dresses from the noon of Saturday to ten o’clock Monday, in addition to those already in hand for the drawing-room the following day, was an unusual undertaking, even for the indefatigable Madame Malin. Hour after hour those poor girls worked,—through Saturday night, the yearned-for Sabbath, again late into the night, till many fainted on their seats, and the miserable toil was continued in a recumbent posture by those unable to sit upright. A dead weight was on poor Fanny’s heart, a foreboding misery; but the sufferings of the frame were such as almost to deaden the agony of mind. The hour of release came at length, inasmuch that, ill as she was, she craved permission to take home some of the dresses, that she might call at Mrs. Miller’s on her way back, and learn some news of Harry, and beseech her old friend to seek him, and tell him the reason of her forced absence. Exhausted and most wretched as she was, she had to wait till the dresses were tried on—the capricious humour of the young ladies proved, by altering, realtering, and final arrangement as they were originally—to bear with petty fault-finding—until her whole frame seemed one mass of nerve; and so detained, that she only entered the street leading to her old friend’s abode, as the carriages whirled off their elegantly-attired inmates to Lady Gresham’s fÊte.

What a tale awaited her! Harry, restless, miserable,—almost maddened by the false reports against her,—and from the great pressure of business in his master’s shop, from the innumerable visits of modistes’ assistants to procure the necessary materials so needed for the costumes of Mrs. Gresham’s fÊte, not released till past one o’clock Sunday morning, had perambulated the streets all night, in the vain hope of meeting Fanny, encountering one of his jovial companions, who, half intoxicated, swore he had seen her entering a coach with—Merton knew whom—and when collared and shaken by the infuriated lover till he recovered his more sober senses, declared he could not tell exactly, but he thought it was her: at all events, Harry would know to-morrow, if she had gone as usual to Mrs. Miller’s.

There she was not. Never before had six o’clock on Sunday evening come without her presence; and really anxious, Mrs. Miller (though not believing a syllable against her) conjured the unhappy young man to call himself at Madame Malin’s, and inquire if she were ill or detained. He did so. The well-instructed lacquey declared the family were all at evening service, and if the apprentices were not with their friends, he supposed they were there also; he knew nothing about them; but he was quite sure his mistress never permitted them to work on Sundays. Harry was in no state coolly to consider his words. He rushed back like a madman to Mrs. Miller, uttered a few incoherent sentences, and darted away before she had time or thought even to reply. That very evening he enlisted, and the Monday found him marching to Southampton with other troops about to embark for India. A few lines to Mrs. Miller told her this, and accompanied a parcel directed to Fanny, in case she should ever see or hear of her again. The poor girl had just strength to tear it open, to discover all her letters and formerly treasured gifts, even to some withered flowers, returned, with a few words of stinging reproach, bidding her farewell for ever, and dropped lifeless at the old woman’s feet. One or two intervals of coherency enabled her, by a few broken phrases, to explain the reason of her absence; but brain fever followed, and even when Miss Neville saw her, all hope was over. Vain was the skill of the gifted and benevolent physician Lucy called in. Disease had been too long and too deeply rooted for resistance to a shock which, in its agony, would have prostrated even a healthy constitution. A few, a very few days of intense suffering, and the crushed heart ceased to beat, the blighted frame to feel, and misery for her was over. But for poor Harry—for the parents of both—what might comfort them? We have seen the deterioration of Harry’s character. There were many to mark and condemn the faults, but none to perceive their cause. And when he absconded from his apprenticeship, it did but bring conviction as to his determined depravity. Who may tell the agony of those two humble English homes, when the post brought the miserable news of death to the one, and of sin and utter separation to the other? They had not even the poor comfort of knowing the cause of their son’s change; their own bold, free, happy, loving Harry,—how could his parents associate him with sin?—or Fanny, the healthy, rosy, graceful Fanny, with suffering and death? And what caused these fearful evils, amongst which our tale is but one amongst ten thousand? Lucy Neville buried her face in her hands as she sat by the lowly pallet, where lay the faded form whence life had only half an hour before departed, and thanked God that the temptation had been indeed resisted, and that she had not made one at Lady Gresham’s fÊte. It had not, indeed, been the primary, or even the secondary cause. It did but strike the last blow and shiver to atoms the last lingering dream of hope and joy which, despite of oppression, misery, despair, will rest invisibly in the youthful heart, till driven thence by death.

“Lucy!” exclaimed Lord Valery that same day, stopping the carriage unexpectedly as it was about to drive off from that part of St. James’s where it usually waited for her (she shrunk from the notice which a nobleman’s carriage, seen in such localities as Mrs. Miller’s, would inevitably produce),—“Lucy, an old friend wishes to recall himself to your memory; will you give him a seat in your carriage, and take me on the box? We both pine for fresh air, and a drive in the Park will revive us for dinner, which, whether he will or no, I intend this gentleman to partake.”

The words were the lightest, but the tone which spoke them betrayed the truth at once. It was Herbert Gresham by his side. Herbert Gresham, whose earnest eyes were fixed on hers, with an expression in their dark depths needing no words to tell her that his early dream, even as her own, was unchanged—that the first action of his now unshackled will was to seek her, requiring no renewal of acquaintance, again to love and trust her. And though the suddenness of the meeting, the rapid transition from sorrowing sympathy to individual joy, did so flush and pale her cheek, that her brother looked at her with some alarm, there was neither hesitation nor idle reserve. Her hand was extended at once, and the pressure which clasped it was sufficient response. Whether they continued so silent, when Herbert did spring into the carriage, and took his seat by her side, indeed we know not. Certain it is that, had it not been for Lord Valery, the footman might have waited long enough for orders to drive “home;” and equally certain that no day had ever seemed so short to Lucy,—short in its fullness of present enjoyment; in its retrospect, could it have been but one brief day?

“And that poor girl is really gone?” inquired Lord Valery, just as Herbert Gresham was about taking his departure, most reluctantly warned to do so by a neighbouring clock striking midnight. “Another victim to that hateful system, desecrating our lovely and most noble land!”

“Dear Edward, hush!” interposed Lucy, gently, as her eye rested on her lover.

“Do not check him, dearest, though I prize that fond thought for me. I know the whole tale—that the fÊte welcoming my return, by misdirected zeal and thoughtless folly, has added incalculably to the general burden, and to individuals brought death and a life-long despair. The past, alas! we cannot remedy—the future——” and his arm was fondly thrown round Lucy, and his lip pressed her brow—“dearest, let us hope next season there will be another Lady Gresham’s fÊte fraught with happiness for all.”