Rosa Nouchette Carey

'When a man begins to do wrong, he cannot answer for himself how far he may be carried on. He does not see beforehand; he cannot know where he will find himself after the sin is committed. One false step forces him to another.'—Newman.

'An Italian proverb, too well known, declares that if you would succeed you must not be too good.'—Emerson.

Audrey found Michael strangely uncommunicative that evening; he hardly responded to her expressions of pleasure at seeing him again, and all her questions were answered as briefly as possible. His manner was as kind as ever; indeed, he spoke to her with more than his usual gentleness; but during dinner he seemed to find conversation difficult, and all her little jokes fell flat. She wanted to know how many pretty things he had bought, and if he had put down his name for the proof engraving of a certain picture he had longed to possess.

'Twenty guineas is nothing to you now, Michael,' she observed playfully.

'No, I forgot all about the picture,' he returned, starting up from his chair; 'but I have brought you a present.'

And the next moment he put in her hand a little case. When Audrey opened it, there was a small cross studded with diamonds of great beauty and lustre, and the whole effect was so sparkling and dainty that Audrey quite flushed with surprise and pleasure.

'Oh, mother, look how beautiful! But, Michael, how dare you waste your money on me; this must have cost a fortune!' And then she added a little thoughtfully, 'I am afraid Cyril will be sorry when he sees this; he is always lamenting that he cannot give me things.'

'I chose a bracelet for Geraldine,' he returned carelessly, as though buying diamonds were an everyday business with him. 'Would you like to see it?' and he showed her the contents of the other case. 'I have a small offering for my godson in the shape of the inevitable mug, and I mean to give this to Leonard's mamma.'

'It is very handsome; mother thinks so: don't you, mother? and Gage is devoted to bracelets; but I like mine ever so much better; it is the very perfection of a cross, and I shall value it, ah, so dearly, Michael!' and Audrey held out her hand as she spoke.

Michael pressed it silently. It was little wonder, he thought, that Audrey liked her gift better than Geraldine's; it had cost at least three times as much; in fact, its value had been so great that he had written the cheque with some slight feeling of shame and compunction. 'There is no harm, after all, and she is so fond of diamonds,' he assured himself, as he put the little case in his pocket; 'she will not know what it cost me, and he will never be able to buy ornaments for her—I may as well give myself this pleasure;' and just for the moment it did please him to see her delight over the ornament.

'It is not so much the diamonds that please me, as Michael's kindness and generosity,' she said to Cyril the next day. 'He has bought nothing for himself, and yet he has been in town a whole month; he only thought of us.'

And Cyril observed quietly, as he closed the case, that it was certainly very kind of Captain Burnett; but a close observer would have said that Michael's generosity had not quite pleased him.

'I suppose you will wear this to-night at the Charringtons'?' he asked presently.

'Yes; and those lovely flowers you have brought me,' she added, with one of her charming smiles; and somehow the cloud passed in a moment from the young man's brow.

What did it matter, after all, that he could not give her diamonds? Had he not given himself to her, and did they not belong to each other for time and for eternity? And as he thought this he took her in his arms with a loving speech.

'You are sweet as the very sweetest of my flowers,' he said, holding her close to him. 'You are the very dearest thing in the world to me, Audrey; and sometimes, when I think of the future, I am almost beside myself with happiness.'

When the little excitement of the diamonds was over, Michael relapsed again into gravity, and he was still grave when he went up to Hillside the next day. A wakeful night's reflection had brought him no comfort; he felt as though a gulf were opening before him and those whom he loved, and that he dared not, for very dread and giddiness, look into it.

When they returned from church, and were about to sit down to the sumptuous luncheon, he took Geraldine aside and presented his offerings. To his surprise, she was quite overcome, and would have called her husband to share her pleasure; but he begged her to say nothing just then.

'Audrey has a present, too, but she took it far more calmly,' he said, in a rallying tone. But as he spoke he wondered at his cousin's beauty. Her complexion had always been very transparent, but now excitement had added a soft bloom. Was it motherhood, he asked himself, that deepened the expression of her eyes and lent her that new gentleness? 'I never saw you look better, Gage,' he said, in quite an admiring voice; but Geraldine was as unconscious as ever.

'I am very well,' she returned, smiling, 'only not quite as strong as usual. It is such a pity that Percival would not allow me to invite you to dinner, because he says that I ought to be quiet this evening. He and mother make such a fuss over me. Percival means to take baby and me for a change during the Easter holidays. That will be nice, will it not? I think we shall go to Bournemouth.'

'Very nice,' he returned absently.

'I wish Audrey would go too, but I am afraid she will not leave Cyril; he is not going away this vacation. That is the worst of a sister being engaged, she is not half so useful.'

'I think Audrey would go with you if you asked her; she is very unselfish.'

'Yes; but she has to think about someone else now, and I do not wish to be hard on Cyril. He is very nice, and we all like him.'

'I am very glad to hear that, Gage.'

'Yes; we must just make the best of it. Of course, Percival and I will always consider she is throwing herself away; but that cannot be helped now. By the bye, Michael, this is the first time I have seen you since you came into your fortune. I have never been able to tell you how delighted we both were to hear of it.'

'Well, it was a pretty good haul.'

'Yes; but no one will do more with it. But you must not buy any more diamonds;' and then she smiled on him. And just then Master Leonard made his appearance in his long lace robe, and, as Geraldine moved to take her boy in her arms, there was no further conversation between them.

They left soon after luncheon. Mr. Bryce had to take an early afternoon train, and Dr. Ross accompanied him to the station. Audrey drove home with her mother; they expected Michael to follow them, but he had other business on hand. There was his interview with Mrs. Blake, and on leaving Hillside he went straight to the Gray Cottage.

Mollie met him at the door. She looked disturbed and anxious.

'Yes; you are to go up to the drawing-room, Captain Burnett,' she said, when he asked if Mrs. Blake were at home. 'Mamma is there. I heard her tell Biddy so. Do you know'—puckering up her face as though she were ready to cry—'mamma will not speak to any of us—not even to Cyril! She says she is ill, and that only Biddy understands her. It is so odd that she is able to see a visitor.'

'What makes you think she is ill, Mollie?'

'Oh, because she looked so dreadful when she came home last night; she could hardly walk upstairs, and Cyril was not there to help her. He was quite frightened when I told him, and went to her room at once; but her door was locked, and she said her head ached so that she could not talk. Biddy was with her then; we could hear her voice distinctly, and mamma seemed moaning so.'

'Has she seen your brother this morning?'

'Yes, just for a minute; but the room was darkened, and he could not see her properly. She told him that the pain had got on the nerves, and that she really could not bear us near her. But she would not let him send for a doctor, and Biddy seemed to agree with her.'

'Perhaps she will be better to-morrow,' he suggested; and then he left Mollie and went upstairs. 'Poor little girl!' he said to himself; 'I wonder what she would say if she knew her father were living!'

And then he tapped at the drawing-room door. He was not quite sure whether anyone bade him enter. Mrs. Blake was sitting in a chair drawn close to the fire; her back was towards him. She did not move or turn her head as he walked towards her, and when he put out his hand to her she took no notice of it.

'You have come,' she said, in a quick, hard voice. And then she turned away from him and looked into the fire.

'Yes, I have come,' he replied quietly, as he sat down on the oak settle that was drawn up near her chair. 'I am sorry to see you look so ill, Mrs. Blake.'

He might well say so. She had aged ten years since the previous night. Her face was quite drawn and haggard—he had never before noticed that there were threads of gray in her dark hair—she had always looked so marvellously young; but now he could see the lines and the crows'-feet; and as his sharp eyes detected all this he felt very sorry for her.

'Ill; of course I'm ill,' she answered irritably. 'All night long I have been wishing I were dead. I said yesterday that I would rather kill myself than tell you my story; but to-day I have thought better of it.'

'I am glad of that.'

'Of course I am not a fool, and I know I am in your power—yours and that man's.' And here she shivered.

'Will you tell me this one thing first? Is he—is Matthew O'Brien your husband?'

'Yes; I suppose so. I was certainly married to him once.'

'Then, why, in the name of heaven, Mrs. Blake, do you allow people to consider you a widow?'

'Because I am a widow,' she returned harshly. 'Because I have unmarried myself and given up my husband. Because I refused to have anything more to do with him—he brought me disgrace, and I hated him for it.'

'But, pardon me, it is not possible—no woman can unmarry herself in this fashion—unless you mean——'

And here he stopped, feeling it impossible to put any such question to her. But what on earth could she mean?

'No, I have not divorced him. I suppose, in one sense, he may still be regarded as my husband; but for fourteen years he has been dead to me, and I have called myself a widow.'

'But you must have known it was wrong,' he returned, a little bewildered by these extraordinary statements. If she had not looked so wan and haggard, he would have accused her of talking wildly.

'No, Captain Burnett; I do not own it was wrong. Under some circumstances a woman is bound to defend herself and her children—a tigress will brave a loaded gun if her young are starving. If it were to come over again, I would do the same. But I will acknowledge to you that I did not love my husband.'

'No; that is evident.'

'I never loved him, though I was foolish enough to marry him. I suppose I cared for him in a sort of way. He was handsome, and had soft, pleasant ways with him; and I was young and giddy, and ready for any excitement. But I had not been his wife three months before I would have given worlds to have undone my marriage.'

'Was he a bad husband to you?'

'No. Mat was always too soft for unkindness; but he was not the man for me. Besides, I had married him out of pique—there was someone I liked much better. You see, I am telling you all quite frankly. I am in your power, as I said before. If I refused to speak, you would just go to Mat, and he would tell you everything.'

'I am very much relieved to find you so reasonable, Mrs. Blake. It is certainly wiser and better to tell me yourself. You have my promise that, as far as possible, I will give you my help; but at present I do not know how this may be.'

'Yes; I will tell you my story,' she answered. But there was a bitterness of antagonism in her tone as she said this. 'I have always been afraid of you, Captain Burnett; I felt you disliked and mistrusted me, and I have never been easy with you. If it were not for Kester, and your kindness to him, I should be horribly afraid of you. But for Kester's sake you would not be hard on his mother.'

'I would not be hard on any woman,' he answered quietly. 'It is true I have mistrusted you. I told you so yesterday. But if you will confide in me, you shall not repent your confidence.'

'You mean you will not be my enemy.'

'I am no woman's enemy,' he said a little proudly. 'I wish someone else had been in my place yesterday; you can understand it is not a pleasant business to ask these questions of a lady; but there are many interests involved, and I am like a son to Dr. Ross. I am bound to look into this matter more closely for his sake, and——' he paused, and, if possible, Mrs. Blake turned a little pale.

'Let me tell you quickly,' she said. 'Perhaps, after all, you will not blame me, and you will help me to keep it from Cyril.' And here she looked at him imploringly, and he could see the muscles of her face quivering. 'No, I never loved Mat. I felt it was a condescension on my part to marry him. My people were well connected. One of my uncles was a dean, and another was a barrister. My father was a clergyman.'

'What was his name?'

'Stephen Carrick. He was Vicar of Bardley.'

'I have heard of Dean Carrick; he wrote some book or other, and came into some notoriety before his death. Is it possible that you are his niece?'

'Yes. I was very proud of him, and of my other uncle; but they would have nothing to do with me after my marriage. We were living in Ireland then, and when Mat brought me to London I seemed to have cut myself adrift from all my people. My father died not long afterwards, and my mother followed him, and my two brothers were at sea. I saw the name of Carrick in the papers one day—James Carrick—he was in the navy; so it must have been Jem. Well, he is dead, and, as far as I know, Charlie may be dead too.'

She spoke with a degree of hardness that astonished him, but he would not interrupt her by a question. He saw that, for some reason of her own, she was willing to tell her story.

'I soon found out my mistake when Mat brought me to London. From the first we were unfortunate; we had neither of us any experience. Our first landlady cheated us, and our lodgings were far too expensive for our means—my money had not then come to me. At my mother's death I was more independent.

'I might have grown fonder of Mat but for one thing. Very shortly after our marriage—indeed, before the honeymoon was over—I discovered that he had already stooped to deceit. He had always led me to imagine that his people were well-to-do, and that his parentage was as respectable as mine; indeed, I understood that his only brother was a merchant, with considerable means at his disposal. I do not say Mat told me all this in words, but he had a way with him of implying things.

'I was very proud—ridiculously proud, if you will—and I had a horror of trade. You may judge, then, the shock it was to me when I found out by the merest accident—from reading a fragment of a letter—that this brother was a corn-chandler in a small retail way.

'We had our first quarrel then. Mat was very cowed and miserable when he saw how I took it; he wanted to coax me into forgiving his deceit.

'"I knew what a proud little creature you were, Olive," he said, trying to extenuate his shabby conduct, "and that there was no chance of your listening to me if you found out Tom was a tradesman. What does it matter about the shop? Tom is as good a chap as ever breathed, and Susan is the best-hearted woman in the world." But I would not be conciliated.

'I would not go near his people, and when he mentioned their names I always turned a deaf ear. It is a bad thing when a woman learns to despise her husband; but from that day I took Mat's true measure, and my heart seemed to harden against him. Perhaps I did not go the right way to improve him or keep him straight, but I soon found out that I dared not rely on him.

'I think I should have left him before the year was out, only my baby was born and took all my thoughts; and Mat was so good to me, that for very shame I dare not hint at such a thing. But we were not happy. His very fondness made things worse, for he was always reproaching me for my coldness.

'"You are the worst wife that a man could have," he would say to me. "You would not care if I were brought home dead any day, and yet if the boy's finger aches you want to send for the doctor. If I go to the bad, it will be your own fault, because you never have a kind look or word for me."

'But he might as well have spoken to the wind. There was no love for Mat in my heart, and I worshipped my boy.'

'You are speaking now of your eldest son?'

'Yes; of Cyril. He was my first-born, and I doted on him. I had two other children before Kester came; but, happily, they died—I say happily, for I had hard work to make ends meet with three children. I was so wrapped up in my boy that I neglected Mat more and more; and when he took to going out of an evening I made no complaints. We were getting on better then, and I seldom quarrelled with him, unless he refused to give me money for the children. Perhaps he was afraid to cross me, for the money was generally forthcoming when I asked for it; but I never took the trouble to find out how he procured it. And he was only too pleased to find me good-tempered and ready to talk to him, or to bring Cyril to play with him; for he was fond of the boy, too. Well, things went on tolerably smoothly until Mollie was born; but she was only a few months old when the crash came.'

She stopped, and an angry darkness came over her face.

'You need not tell me,' returned Michael, anxious to spare her as much as possible. 'I am aware of the forgery for which your husband incurred penal servitude for so many years.'

'You know that!' she exclaimed, with a terrified stare. 'Who could have told you? Oh, I forgot Mat's brother at Brail! Why did I never guess that Audrey's old friend she so often mentioned was this Tom O'Brien? But there are other O'Briens—there was one at Richmond when we lived there—and I thought he was still in his shop.'

'We heard all the leading facts from him; he told Audrey everything.'

'Then you shall hear my part now,' she returned, with flashing eyes. 'What do you suppose were my feelings when I heard the news that Mat was in prison, and that my boy's father was a convicted felon? What do you imagine were my thoughts when I sat in my lodgings, with my children round me, knowing that this heritage of shame was on them?'

'It was very bad for you,' he whispered softly, for her tragical aspect impressed him with a sense of grandeur. She was not good: by her own account she had been an unloving wife; but in her way she had been strong—only her strength had been for evil.

'Yes, it was bad. I think for days I was almost crazed by my misfortunes; and then Mat sent for me. He was penitent, and wanted my forgiveness, so they told me.'

'And you went?'

'Of course I went. I had a word to say to him that needed an answer, and I was thankful for the opportunity to speak it. I dressed myself at once, and went to the prison. Cyril cried to come with me, and slapped me with his little hands when I refused to take him; but I only smothered him with kisses. I remember how he struggled to get free, and how indignant he was. "I don't love you one bit to-day, mamma! you are not my pretty mamma at all." But I only laughed at his childish pet—my bright, beautiful boy!—I can see him now.

'Mat looked utterly miserable; but his wretchedness did not seem to touch me. The sin was his, and he must expiate it; it was I and my children who were the innocent sufferers. He began cursing himself for his mad folly, as he called it, and begged me over and over again to forgive him. I listened to him for a few minutes, and then I looked at him very steadily.

'"I will forgive you, Mat, and not say a hard word to you, if you will promise me one thing."

'"And what is that?" he asked, seeming as though he dreaded my answer.

'"That you will never try to see me or my children again."'