by Ellen Wood
“Can nothing be done to alleviate your sufferings?” he inquired in a kindly tone.
“Nothing. The sooner death comes to release me from them, the better.”
He lingered yet, hesitating. Then he bent closer to her, and spoke in a whisper.
“Have you thought much of that other life? Of the necessity of repentance — of seeking earnestly the pardon of God?”
“That is your Protestant fashion,” she answered with equanimity. “I have made my confession to a priest and he has given me absolution. A good fat old man; he was very kind to me; he saw how I had been tossed and turned about in life. He will bring the bon dieu to me the last thing, and cause a mass to be said for my soul.”
“I thought I had heard that you were a Protestant.”
“I was either. I said I was a Protestant to Madame Dare. But the Roman Catholic religion is the most convenient to take up when you are passing. Your priests say they cannot pardon sins.”
The interview took longer in acting than it has in telling, and William returned to the hotel to find Mary tired, wondering at his absence, and a letter to Mrs. Ashley — with which you have been favoured — lying on the table, awaiting its conclusion.
“You are weary, my darling. You should not have remained up.”
“I thought you were never coming, William. I thought you must have gone off by the London steamer, and left me here! The hotel omnibus took some passengers to it at ten o’clock.”
William sat down on the sofa, and drew her to him; the full tide of thankfulness going up from his heart that all women were not as the one he had just left.
“And what did Mademoiselle Varsini want with you, William? Is she really dying?”
“I think she is dying. You must not ask me what she wanted, Mary. It was to tell me something — to speak of things connected with herself and the Dares. They would not be pleasant to your ears.”
“But I have been writing an account of all this to mamma, and have left my letter open, to send word what the governess could have to say to you. What can I tell her?”
“Tell her as I tell you, my dearest: that what I have been listening to is more fit for Mr. Ashley’s ears than for yours or hers.”
Mary rose and wrote rapidly the concluding lines. William stood and watched her. He laughed at the “smear.”
“I am not familiar with my new name yet: I was signing myself ‘Mary Ashley.’”
“Would you go back to the old name, if you could?” cried he, somewhat saucily.
“Oh, William!”
Saturday came round again: the day they were to leave — just a week since they had come, since the encounter in the park. They were taking an early walk in the market, when certain low sounds, as of chanting, struck upon their ears. A funeral was coming along; it had just turned out of the great church of St. Eloi, at the other corner of the Place. Not a wealthy funeral — quite the other thing. On the previous day they had seen a grand interment, attended by its distinguishing marks; seven or eight banners, as many priests. Some sudden feeling prompted William to ask whose funeral this was, and he made inquiry of a shopkeeper, who was standing at her door.
“Monsieur, c’est l’enterrement d’une étrangère. Une Italienne, l’on dit: Madame Varsini.”
“Oh, William! do they bury her already?” was Mary’s shocked remonstrance. “It was only yesterday at midday the sister came to you to say she had died. What a shame!”
“Hush, love! Many of the people here understand English. They bury quickly in these countries.”
They stood on the pavement, and the funeral came quickly on. One black banner borne aloft in a man’s hand, two boys in surplices with lighted candles, and the priest chanting with his open book. Eight men, in white corded hats and black cloaks, bore the coffin on a bier, and there was a sprinkling of impromptu followers — as there always is at these foreign funerals. As the dead was borne past him on its way to the cemetery, William, following the usage of the country, lifted his hat, and remained uncovered until it had gone by.
And that was the last of Bianca Varsini.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE DOWNFALL OF THE DARES.
It was a winter’s morning, and the family party round the breakfast table at William Halliburton’s looked a cheery one, with its adjuncts of a good fire and good fare. Mr. and Mrs. Ashley and Henry were guests. And I can tell you that in Mr. Ashley they were entertaining no less a personage than the high sheriff of the county.
The gentlemen nominated for sheriffs, that year, for the county of Helstonleigh, whose names had gone up to the Queen, were as follows: —
Humphrey Coldicott, Esquire, of Coldicott Grange;
Sir Harry Marr, Bart., of The Lynch;
Thomas Ashley, Esquire, of Deoffam Hall. And her Majesty had been pleased to pick the latter name.
The gate of the garden swung open, and some one came hastily round the gravel-path to the house. Mary, who was seated at the head of the table, facing the window, caught a view of the visitor.
“It is Mrs. Dare!” she exclaimed.
“Mrs. Dare!” repeated Mr. Ashley, as a peal at the hall-bell was heard. “Nonsense, child!”
“Papa, indeed it is.”
“I think you must be mistaken, Mary,” said her husband. “Mrs. Dare would scarcely be out at this early hour.”
“Oh, you disbelievers all!” laughed Mary. “As if I did not know Mrs. Dare! She looked scared and flurried.”
Mrs. Dare, looking indeed scared and flurried, came into the breakfast-room. The servant had been showing her into another room, but she put him aside, and appeared amidst them.
What brought her there? What had she come to tell them? Alas! of their unhappy downfall. How the Dares had contrived to go on so long, without the crash coming, they alone knew. They had promised to pay here, they had promised to pay there; and people, tradespeople especially, did not much like to begin compulsory measures with old Anthony Dare, who had so long held sway in Helstonleigh. His professional business had almost left him — perhaps because there was no efficient head to carry it on. Cyril was just what mademoiselle had called Herbert, a vagabond; and Cyril was an irretrievable one. No good to the business was he — not half as much good as he was to the public-houses. Mr. Dare, with white hair, bent form, and dim eyes, would go creeping to his office most days; but his memory was leaving him, and it was evident to all that he was relapsing into his second childhood. Latterly they had lived entirely by privately disposing of their portable effects — as Honey Fair used to do when it fell out of work. They owed money everywhere; rent, taxes, servants’ wages, large debts, small debts — it was universal. And now the landlord had put in his claim after the manner of landlords, and it had brought on the climax. They were literally without resource; they knew not where to turn; they had not a penny, or the worth of it, in the wide world. Mrs. Dare, in the alarm occasioned by the unwelcome visitor — for the landlord’s man had made good his entrance that morning — came flying off to Mr. Ashley, some extravagant hope floating in her mind that help might be obtained from him.
“Here’s trouble! Here’s trouble!” she exclaimed by way of salutation, wringing her hands frantically.
They rose in consternation, believing she must have gone wild. William handed her a chair.
“There, don’t come round me,” she cried, as she flung herself into it. “Go on with your breakfast. I have concealed our troubles until I am heart-sick, and now they can be concealed no longer, and I have come for help to you. Don’t press anything upon me, Mrs. William Halliburton; to attempt to eat would choke me!”
She sat there and entered on her grievances. How they had long been without money, had lived by credit, and by pledging things out of their house; how they owed more than she could tell; how a “horrible man” had come into their house that morning, as an emissary of the landlord.
“What are we to do?” she wailed. “Will you help us? Mr. Ashley, will you? — your wife is my husband’
s cousin, you know. Mr. Halliburton, will you help us? Don’t you know that I have a right to claim kindred with you? Your father and I were first cousins, and lived for some time under the same roof.”
William remembered the former years when she had not been so ready to own the relationship. He remembered the day when Mr. Dare had put a seizure into their house, and his mother had gone, craving grace of him. Mr. Ashley remembered it, and his eye met William’s. How marvellously had the change been brought round! the right come to light!
“What is it that you wish me to do?” inquired Mr. Ashley. “I do not understand.”
“Not understand!” she sharply echoed, in her grief. “I want the landlord paid out. You have ample means at command, Mr. Ashley, and might do this much for us.”
A modest request, certainly! The rent due was for three years: considerably more than two hundred pounds. Mr. Ashley replied to it quietly.
“A moment’s reflection might convince you, Mrs. Dare, that to pay this money would be fruitless waste. The instant this procedure gets wind — and in all probability it has already done so — other claims, as pressing, will be enforced.”
“Tradespeople must wait,” she answered, with irritation.
“Wait for what?” asked Mr. Ashley. “Do you expect to drop into a fortune?”
Wait for what, indeed? For complete ruin? There was nothing else to wait for. Mrs. Dare sat beating her foot against the carpet.
“Mr. Dare has grown useless,” she said. “What he says one minute, he forgets the next; he is almost in a state of imbecility. I have no one to consult with, and therefore I come to you. Indeed, you must help me.”
“But I do not see what I can do for you,” rejoined Mr. Ashley. “As to paying your debts, it is — it is — in fact, it is not to be thought of. I have my own payments to make, my expenses to keep up. I could not do it, Mrs. Dare.”
She paused again, playing nervously with her bonnet strings. “Will you go back with me, and see what you can make of Mr. Dare? Perhaps between you something may be arranged. I don’t understand things.”
“I cannot go back with you,” replied Mr. Ashley. “I must attend the meeting which takes place this morning at the Guildhall.”
“In your official capacity,” remarked Mrs. Dare in not at all a pleasant tone of voice. “I forgot that you preside at it. How very grand you have become!”
“Very grand indeed, I think, considering the lowly estimation in which you held the glove manufacturer, Thomas Ashley,” he answered, with a good-humoured laugh. “I will call upon your husband in the course of the day, Mrs. Dare.”
She turned to William. “Will you return with me? I have a claim on you,” she reiterated eagerly.
He shook his head. “I accompany Mr. Ashley to the meeting.”
She was obliged to be satisfied, turned abruptly, and left the room, William attending her to the door.
“What d’you call that?” asked Henry, lifting his voice for the first time.
“Call it?” repeated his sister.
“Yes, Mrs. Mary; call it. Cheek, I should say.”
“Hush, Henry,” said Mr. Ashley.
“Very well, sir. It’s cheek all the same, though.”
As Mr. Ashley surmised, the misfortune had already got wind, and the unhappy Dares were besieged that day by clamorous creditors. When Mr. Ashley and William arrived there, for they walked up at the conclusion of the public meeting, they found Mr. Dare seated alone in the dining-room; that sad dining-room which had witnessed the tragical end of Anthony. He cowered over the fire, his thin hands stretched out to the blaze. He was not altogether childish; but his memory failed, and he was apt to fall into fits of wandering. Mr. Ashley drew forward a chair and sat down by him.
“I fear things do not look very bright,” he observed. “We called in at your office as we came by, and found a seizure was also put in there.”
“There’s nothing much for ’em to take but the desks,” returned old Anthony.
“Mrs. Dare wished me to come and talk matters over with you, to see whether anything could be done. She does not understand them, she said.”
“What can be done, when things come to such a pass as this?” returned Anthony Dare, lifting his head sharply. “That’s just like women— ‘seeing what’s to be done!’ I am beset on all sides. If the bank sent me a present of three or four thousand pounds, we might go on again. But it won’t, you know. The things must go, and we must go. I suppose they’ll not put me in prison; they’d get nothing by doing it.”
He leaned forward and rested his chin on his stick, which was stretched out before him as usual. Presently he resumed, his eyes and words alike wandering:
“He said the money would not bring us good if we kept it. And it has not: it has brought a curse. I have told Julia so twenty times since Anthony went. Only the half of it was ours, you know, and we took the whole.”
“What money?” asked Mr. Ashley, wondering what he was saying.
“Old Cooper’s. We were at Birmingham when he died, I and Julia. The will left it all to her, but he charged us — —”
Mr. Dare suddenly stopped. His eye had fallen on William. In these fits of wandering he partially lost his memory, and mixed things and people together in the most inextricable confusion.
“Are you Edgar Halliburton?” he went on.
“I am his son. Do you not remember me, Mr. Dare?”
“Ay, ay. Your son-in-law,” nodding to Mr. Ashley. “But Cyril was to have had that place, you know. He was to have been your partner.”
Mr. Ashley made no reply. It might not have been understood. And Mr. Dare resumed, confounding William with his father.
“It was hers in the will, you know, Edgar, and that’s some excuse, for we had to prove it. There was not time to alter the will, but he said it was an unjust one, and charged us to divide the money; half for us, half for you; to divide it to the last halfpenny. And we took it all. We did not mean to take it, or to cheat you, but somehow the money went; our expenses were great, and we had heavy debts, and when you came afterwards to Helstonleigh and died, your share was already broken into, and it was too late. Ill-gotten money brings nothing but a curse, and that money brought it to us. Will you shake hands and forgive?”
“Heartily,” replied William, taking his wasted hand.
“But you had to struggle, and the money would have kept struggle from you. It was many thousands.”
“Who knows whether it would or not?” cheerily answered William. “Had we possessed money to fall back upon, we might not have struggled with a will; we might not have put out all the exertion that was in us, and then we should never have got on as we have done.”
“Ay; got on. You are looked up to now; you have become gentlemen. And what are my boys? The money was yours.”
“Dismiss it entirely from your memory, Mr. Dare,” was William’s answer, given in true compassion. “I believe that our not having had it may have been good for us in the long-run, rather than a drawback. The utter want of money may have been the secret of our success.”
“Ay,” nodded old Dare. “My boys should have been taught to work, and they were only taught to spend. We must have our luxuries indoors, forsooth, and our show without; our servants, and our carriages, and our confounded pride. What has it ended in?”
What had it! They made no answer. Mr. Dare remained still for a while, and then lifted his haggard face, and spoke in a whisper, a shrinking dread in his face and tone.
“They have been nothing but my curses. It was through Herbert that she, that wicked foreign woman, murdered Anthony.”
Did he know of that? How had the knowledge come to him! William had not betrayed it, except to Mr. Ashley and Henry. And they had buried the dreadful secret down deep in the archives of their breasts. Mr. Dare’s next words disclosed the puzzle.
“She died, that woman. And she wrote to Herbert on her death-bed and made a confession. He sent a part of it on here, lest, I suppose, we might d
oubt him still. But his conduct led to it. It is dreadful to have such sons as mine!”
His stick fell to the ground. Mr. Ashley held him, while William picked it up. He was gasping for breath.
“You are not well,” cried Mr. Ashley.
“No; I think I am going. One can’t stand these repeated shocks. Did I see Edgar Halliburton here? I thought he was dead. Is he come for his money?” he continued in a shivering whisper. “We acted according to the will, sir: according to the will, tell him. He can see it in Doctors’ Commons. He can’t proceed against us; he has no proof. Let him go and look at the will.”
“We had better leave him, William,” murmured Mr. Ashley. “Our presence only excites him.”
In the opposite room sat Mrs. Dare. Adelaide passed out of it as they entered. Never before had they remarked how sadly worn and faded she looked. Her later life had been spent in pining after the chance of greatness she had lost, in missing Viscount Hawkesley. Irrevocably lost to her; for the daughter of a neighbouring earl now called him husband. They sat down by Mrs. Dare, but could only condole with her: nothing but the most irretrievable ruin was around.
“We shall be turned from here,” she wailed. “How are we to find a home — to earn a living?”
“Your daughters must do something to assist you,” replied Mr. Ashley. “Teaching, or — —”
“Teaching! in this overdone place!” she interrupted.
“It has been somewhat overdone in that way, certainly of late years,” he answered. “If they cannot get teaching, they may find some other employment. Work of some sort.”
“Work!” shrieked Mrs. Dare. “My daughters work!”
“Indeed, I don’t know what else is to be done,” he answered. “Their education has been good, and I should think they may obtain daily teaching: perhaps sufficient to enable you to live quietly. I will pay for a lodging for you, and give you a trifle towards housekeeping, until you can turn yourselves round.”
“I wish we were all dead!” was the response of Mrs. Dare.