Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  The dim lamp was shaded from the eyes of the invalid by a white porcelain screen, which subdued the light, and cast great shadows of the furniture upon the wails of the room.

  He lay for some time quite still, with his face averted; but by the incessant nervous motion of the hand lying upon the counterpane, Mrs. Dalton knew that he was not asleep.

  The doctor opened the door softly, and looked in.

  “If he says anything to you,” he whispered to Ellinor, “hear it quietly; but do not ask him any questions; and, above all, betray no agitation.”

  She bowed her head in assent, and the physician closed the door.

  Suddenly Horace Margrave turned his face to her, and, looking at her with earnest scrutinising eyes, said:

  “Ellinor Dalton, you ask me what this means. I will tell you. The very day before you left England a strange chance led me into the heart of a manufacturing town — a town which was being ravaged by typhus fever; I was in a very weak state of health, and, as might be expected, I caught this fever. I was warned, when it was perhaps not yet too late to have taken precautions which might have saved me, but I would not take those precautions. I was too great a coward to commit suicide. Some people say a man is too brave to kill himself; I was not, but I was too much a coward. Life was hateful, but I was afraid to die. Yet I would not avert a danger which had not been my own seeking: let the fever kill me, if it would. Ellinor, my wish is fast being accomplished. I am dying.”

  “Horace, Horace!” She took his wasted hand in hers, and pressed it to her lips.

  He drew it away as if he had been stung.

  “For God’s sake, Ellinor, no tenderness! That I cannot bear. For four years you have never seen me without a mask. I am going to let it fall. Henceforward you will only think of me with scorn and detestation.”

  “Scorn you, Horace — never!”

  He waved his hand impatiently, as if to wave away protestations that must soon be falsified.

  ““Wait,” he said; “you do not know.” Then, after a brief pause, he continued, “Ellinor, I have not been the kindest or the most tender of guardians, have I, to my beautiful young ward? You reproached me with my cold indifference one day soon after your marriage, in the little drawing-room in Hertford-street.”

  “You remember that?”

  “I remember that. Yes, Ellinor. There are few words spoken by your lips which I do not remember, together with the tone in which they were spoken, and the place where I heard them. I say, I have not been a kind or affectionate guardian — have I, Ellinor?”

  “You were so once, Horace,” she said.

  “I was so once! When?”

  “Before my uncle left me that wretched fortune.”

  “That wretched fortune — yes, that divided us at once and for ever. Ellinor, there were two reasons for this pitiful comedy of coldness and indifference. Can you guess one of them?”

  “No,” she answered.

  “You cannot? I affected an indifference I did not feel, or pretended an apathy which was a lie from first to last, because I loved you with the whole strength of my heart and soul, from the first to the last.”

  “O, Horace, Horace, for pity’s sake!” She stretched out her hands imploringly, as if she would prevent the utterance of the words which seemed to break her heart.

  “Ellinor, when you were seventeen years of age, you had no thought of succeeding to your uncle’s property. It would have been, upon the whole, a much more natural thing for him to have left it to his adopted son, Henry Dalton. Your father fully expected that he would do so. I expected the same. Your father intrusted me with the custody of your little income, and I discharged my trust honestly. I was a great speculator; I dabbled with thousands, and cast down heavy sums every day as a gambler throws down a card upon the gaming-table; and to me your mother’s little fortune was so insignificant a trust that its management never gave me a moment’s thought or concern. At this time I was going on in a fair way to become a rich man — in fact, was a rich man; and at this time I was an honourable man. I loved you — loved you as I never believed I could love — my beautiful, innocent ward. How could it well be otherwise? I am not a coxcomb, Ellinor, but I dared to say to myself, ‘I love, and am beloved again.’ Those dark-gray eyes had told me the secret of a girl’s confiding heart, and I thought myself more than happy, only too deeply blest. O, my darling, my darling, if I had spoken then!”

  Mrs. Dalton’s face was buried in her hands as she knelt by his pillow, and she was sobbing aloud.

  “There was time enough, I said. This, Ellinor, was the happiest period of my life. Do you remember our quiet evenings in the Rue St. Dominique, when I left business and business cares behind me in Verulam-buildings, and ran over here to spend a week in my young ward’s society? Do you remember the books we read together? Good heavens, there is a page in Lamartine’s odes which I can see before me as I speak! I can see the lights and shadows which I taught you to put under the cupola of a church in Munich which you once painted in water-colours. I can recall every thought, every word, every pleasure, and every emotion of that sweet and tranquil time in which I hoped and believed that you, Ellinor, would be my wife.”

  She lifted her face, blotted by her tears, looked at him for one brief instant, and then let her head fall again upon her clasped hands.

  “Your uncle died, Ellinor, and this airy castle, which I had reared with such confidence, was shattered to the ground. The fortune was left to you on condition that you should marry Henry Dalton. Women are ambitious. You would scarcely resign such a fortune. You would marry young Dalton. This was the lawyer’s answer to the all-important question. But those tender gray eyes, looking up shyly from under their dark lashes, had told a sweet secret, and perhaps your generous heart might count this fortune a small thing to cast away for the sake of the man you loved. This was the lover’s answer; and I hoped still to win my darling. You were not to be made acquainted with the conditions of your uncle’s will until you attained your majority. You were, at the time of his death, not quite twenty years of age; there was therefore an entire year in which you would remain ignorant of the penalties attached to this unexpected wealth. In the mean time I, as sole executor (your uncle, you see, trusted me most entirely), had the custody of the funded property bequeathed to you.

  “I have told you, Ellinor, that I was a speculator. My profession threw me in the way of speculation. Confident in the power of my own intellect, I staked my fortune on the wonderful hazards of the year’46. I doubled that fortune, trebled, quadrupled it, and, when it had grown to be four times its original bulk, I staked it again. It was out of my hands, but it was invested in, as I thought, so safe a speculation, that it was as secure as if it had never been withdrawn from consols. The railway company of which I was a director was one of the richest and most flourishing in England. My own fortune, as I have told you, was entirely invested, and was doubling itself rapidly. As your uncle’s trustee, as your devoted friend, your interests were dearer to me than my own.

  Why should I not speculate with your fortune, double it, and then say to you, ‘See, Ellinor, here are two fortunes of which you are the mistress; one you owe to Henry Dalton, under the conditions of your uncle’s will; the other is yours alone. You are rich. You are free, without any sacrifice, to marry the man you love; and this is my work’? This was what I thought to have said to you at the close of the great year of speculation, 1846.”

  “O Horace, Horace, I see it all. Spare yourself, spare me. Do not tell me any more.”

  “Spare myself? No, Ellinor, not one pang; I deserve to drain my bitter cup to the dregs. You were right in what you said in the boudoir at Sir Lionel’s. The money was not my own; no sophistry, no ingenious twisting of facts and forcing of conclusions, could ever make it mine. How do I know even now that your interest was really my only motive? How do I know that it was not, indeed, the gambler’s guilty madness which impelled me to my crime? How do I know — how do I know? Enough, the crash ca
me; my fortune and yours were together ingulfed in that vast whirlpool; and I, the trusted friend of your dead father, the conscientious lawyer, whose name had become a synonym for honour and honesty — I, Horace Welmoden Margrave, only lineal descendant of the royalist Captain Margrave, who perished at Worcester, fighting for his king and the honour of his noble race — I knew myself to be a cheat and a swindler.”

  “No, no, Horace. You were only mistaken.”

  “Mistaken, Ellinor! Yes, that is one of the words invented by dishonest men to slur over their dishonesty. The fraudulent banker whose ruin involves the ruin of thousands is, after all, his friends say, only mistaken. The clerk who robs his employer in the insane hope of ultimately restoring what he abstracts is, as his counsel pleads to soft-hearted jurymen with sons of their own, only mistaken. The speculator who plays the great game of commercial hazard with another man’s money, he, too, dares to look at the world with a piteous face, and cry, ‘Alas, I was only mistaken!’ No, Ellinor, I have never put in that plea. From the moment of that dreadful crash, which changed hope to despair, and prosperity to desolation, I have at least tried to look my fate in the face. But I have not borne all my own burdens, Ellinor. The weight of my crime has fallen upon the shoulders of Henry Dalton.”

  “Henry Dalton, my husband!”

  “Yes, Ellinor, your husband, Henry Dalton, the truest and most generous of men.”

  “You praise him so much,” she said rather bitterly.

  “Yes, Ellinor, I am weak enough and wicked enough to feel a cruel pain in being compelled to do so; it is the one poor reparation I can make him. God knows I have done him enough injury.”

  The exertion of talking for so long a time had completely exhausted the dying man, and he fell back, half fainting, upon the pillows. The sister of charity, summoned from the next apartment by Ellinor, gave him a restorative; and in low tremulous accents he continued:

  “From the moment of my ruin, Ellinor, I felt and knew that you were lost to me. I could bear this; I did not think my life would be a long one. Vogue la galère! Let it go on its dark way to the end. I say I could bear this, but I could not bear the thought of your contempt, your aversion; that punishment would have been too bitter. I could not come to you, and say, ‘I love you, I have always loved you; I love you as I never before loved, as I never hoped to love again; but I am a swindler and a cheat, and you can never be mine.’ No, Ellinor, I could not do this; and the day of your majority was close at hand. Some step must be taken, and the only thing that could save me from your contempt was the generosity of Henry Dalton.

  “I had heard a great deal of your uncle’s adopted son, and I had met him very often at Arden; I knew him to be as true-hearted a man as ever lived. I determined, therefore, to throw myself upon his generosity, and to reveal all. ‘He will despise me, but I can bear his contempt better than the scorn of the woman I loved.’ I said this to myself, and one night — the night after Henry Dalton had first seen you, and had been already won by your grace and beauty — I took him to my chambers in Verulam-buildings, and after binding him to secrecy, told him all.

  “You now understand the cruel position in which this young man was placed. The fortune, of which he was supposed to become possessor on marrying you, was a thing of the past. You were penniless, except, indeed, for the hundred a-year coming to you from your mother’s property. His solemn oath forbade him to reveal this to you; and for three years he endured your contempt, and was silent. Judge now of the wrong I have done him. Judge now the noble heart which you have tortured.”

  “0 Horace, Horace, what misery this money has brought upon us!”

  “No, Ellinor. What misery one deviation from the straight road of honour has brought upon us! Ellinor, my dearest, my only beloved, can you forgive the man who has so truly loved, yet so deeply injured you?”

  “Forgive you!”

  She rose from her knees, and smoothing the ruffled hair from his forehead with tender, pitying hands, looked him full in the face.

  “Horace,” she said, “when, long ago, you thought I loved you, you read my heart aright; but the depth and truth of that love you could never read. Now, now that I am the wife of another, another to whom I owe so very much affection in reparation of the wrong I have done him, I dare tell you without wrong to him, how much I loved you. And you ask me if I can forgive! As freely as I would have resigned this money for your sake, can I forgive you for the loss of it. This confession has set all right. I will be a good wife to Henry Dalton, and you and he may be sincere friends yet.”

  “What, Ellinor, do you think that, did I not know myself to be dying, I could have made this confession? No, you see me now under the influence of stimulants which give me a false strength; of excitement which is strong enough to master even death. To-morrow night, Ellinor, the doctors tell me, there will no longer be in this weary world a weak, vacillating, dishonourable wretch called Horace Margrave.”

  He stretched out his attenuated hands, drew her towards him, and imprinted one kiss upon her forehead.

  “The first and the last, Ellinor,” he said. “Good-bye.” His face changed to a deadlier white, and he fell back, fainting.

  The physician, peeping in at the half-open door, beckoned to Ellinor:

  “You must leave him at once, my dear madame,” he said. “ Had I not seen the disturbed state of [his mind, I should never have permitted this interview.”

  “0 monsieur, tell me, can you save him?”

  “Only by a miracle, madame; a miracle far beyond medical skill.”

  “You yourself, then, have no hope?”

  “Alas, no, madame!”

  She bowed her head. The physician took her hand in his and pressed it with a fatherly tenderness, looking at her earnestly and mournfully.

  “Send for me to-morrow,” she said imploringly.

  “I will send you tidings of his state. Adieu!”

  She bent her head once more, and, without another word, hurried from the room.

  The following morning, as she was seated in her own apartment, she was once more summoned to the drawingroom.

  The sister of charity was there, talking to her aunt. They both looked grave and thoughtful, and glanced anxiously at Ellinor as she entered the room.

  “He is worse?” said Ellinor to the sister, before a word had been spoken.

  “Unhappily, yes. Madame, he is—”

  “O, do not tell me any more! For pity’s sake, for pity’s sake!” she exclaimed.

  She walked to the window, and stood there, absent and meditative, looking with tearless eyes into the street below, and out at the cheerless gray of the autumn sky.

  She was thinking how strange the world looked to her now that Horace Margrave was dead.

  * * * * * *

  They buried Horace Margrave in the Cemetery of Père la Chaise. There had been some thoughts of conveying his ashes to his native country, that they might rest in the parish church of Margrave, a little village in Westmoreland, the chancel of which church was decorated with a recumbent statue of Algernon Margrave, cavalier, who fell at Worcester fight; but as the deceased had no nearer relations than a few second cousins in the army and the church, and a superannuated admiral, his great-uncle, and as it was furthermore discovered that the accomplished solicitor of Verulam-buildings, Gray’s-Inn, had left not a penny behind him, the idea was very quickly abandoned, and the last remains of the admired Horace were left to decay in a foreign grave.

  It was never fully known who caused the simple monument which ultimately adorned his resting-place to be erected. It was a plain block of marble; no pompous Latin epitaph, or long list of virtues, was thereon engraved; but a half-burned torch, reversed, was sculptured at the bottom of the tablet, and from the smoke of the expiring torch a butterfly mounted upwards. Above this design were inscribed the name and age of the deceased.

  The night following the day of Horace Margrave’s funeral, Henry Dalton was seated, hard at work, at his chambers in the Temple
.

  The light of the office-lamp, falling upon his quiet face, revealed a mournful and careworn expression not usual to him.

  He looked ten years older since his marriage with Ellinor.

  He had fought the battle of life and lost, — lost in that great battle which some hold so lightly, but which to others is an earnest fight, — lost in the endeavour to win the wife he had so tenderly loved.

  He had now nothing left to him but his profession, — no other ambition, no other hope.

  “I will work hard,” he thought, “that she, though separated from me for ever, may still derive every joy of those poor joys which money can buy, from my labour.”

  He had heard nothing of Horace Margrave’s journey to Paris, his illness, or his death. He had no hope of being released from the oath which bound him to silence — to silence which he had sworn to preserve so long as Horace Margrave lived.

  Tired, but still persevering, and absorbed in a difficult case which needed all his professional acumen, he read and wrote on, until past eleven o’clock.

  Just as the clocks were chiming the half hour after eleven, the bell of his outer door rang loudly, as if pulled by an agitated hand.

  His chambers were on the first floor; on the floor below were those of a gentleman who always left at six o’clock.

  “I do not expect anyone at such an hour; but it may be for me,” he thought.

  He heard his clerk open the door, and went on writing without once lifting his head.

  Three minutes afterwards, the door of his own office opened, and a person entered unannounced. He looked up suddenly. A lady dressed in mourning, with her face hidden by a thick veil, stood near the door.