Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “Be quiet, Stubbs,” said Brett. “Tell your story, my man, and be quick about it,” he added.

  “Yes, sir,” said the man, taking his hands from his pockets, and standing squarely before Brett. “That is what I came to do if these sons of guns will let me talk. John Darche was working his passage as cook, sir, and we was wrecked down Magellan way, and some was drowned, poor fellows, and some was taken off, worse luck for us. But I said I would stick to the ship if Darche would, and we should get salvage money. We had not much of a name to lose, either of us, so we tried it, but the cook was not much to boast of for a sailor man, and we could not bring her through, and she went to pieces on the Patagonian shore. The cook, that was John Darche, he caught his death, what with too much salt water, and too little to eat, and died two days after we got ashore. So I buried him. And seeing as my own name wan’t of much use to me, being well known about those parts for a trifle of braining a South American devil in Buenos Ayres, I took his, which wan’t no more use to him neither, and somehow or other I got here, by the help of Almighty God and an Eyetalian captain, and working my passage and eating their blooming boiled paste. And I soon found out what sort of a name I had taken from my dead mate, for he seems to have been pretty well known to these here gentlemen. But I daresay as you can swear, sir, that I ain’t John Darche he as you knew, and maybe as I ain’t wanted on my own account, these gentlemen will come and have a drink with me and call quits.”

  “Have you got anything to prove this story?” Brett asked, when the man had finished.

  “Well, sir, there’s myself to prove it,” said the sailor. “I don’t know that I should care for more proof. And there’s my dead mate’s watch, too. He had a watch, he had. He was a regular swell though he was working his passage as cook. But I had to leave it with my uncle this morning.”

  Brett drew a long breath and clasped his hands nervously together.

  “I suppose you can set this man at liberty, upon my declaration that he is not John Darche, and after hearing his story,” he said, turning to the police officer who stood near the sailor.

  “Oh yes, sir,” answered the latter. “I guess that will be all right. If not, we’ll make it right in five minutes.”

  “Well then, I must ask you to go away for the present — and as quickly as possible. Take that with you, my man, and come and see me to-morrow morning. My name is Brett. The butler will write my address for you.”

  “I don’t want your money, sir,” said the sailor.

  “Oh yes, you do,” answered Brett, with a good-humoured smile. “Go and get your watch out of pawn and bring it with you.”

  “Very well, sir,” said the sailor.

  As they were going out, it struck Brett that he perhaps owed something to Mr. Brown who, after all, had taken a great deal of trouble in the matter.

  “Mrs. Darche will be very much obliged to you, Brown,” he said. “But I am not sure that the matter is ended. It would be awfully good of you to put the thing through, while I break the news to Mrs. Darche. Could you not go along with them and see that the man is really set at liberty?”

  Mr. Brown was a good-natured man, and was quite ready to do all that was asked of him. Brett thanked him once more, and he left the house with the rest.

  When they were all gone, Stubbs came back, evidently very much relieved at the turn matters had taken.

  “Please go into the drawing-room,” said Brett, “and ask Mrs. Darche to come here one moment, if she can speak to me alone, and keep every one else out of the room. You understand, Stubbs.”

  “Yes, sir,” answered the butler. “But it is the Lord’s own mercy, sir, especially the watch.” He left the room in search of Mrs. Darche.

  Scarcely a moment elapsed before she entered the room.

  “Stubbs said you wanted to see me,” she said in a voice that shook with anxiety.

  Brett came forward to meet her, and standing quite close to her, looked into her eyes.

  “Something very strange has happened,” he said, with a little hesitation. “Something — something very, very good — can you bear the shock of a great happiness, dear?”

  “Happiness,” she repeated. “What is it? Oh, yes!” she exclaimed, suddenly understanding. “Oh! thank God, I see it in your eyes! It is not true? He is not here? — oh, Harry!”

  “Yes. That is it. The whole story was only a fabrication. He is not here. You see I cannot let you wait a moment for the good news. It is so good. So much better even than I have told you.”

  “Better!” she cried as the colour rose to her pale cheeks. “What could be better? Oh, it is life, it is freedom — it is almost more than I can bear after this dreadful day!”

  “But you must bear more,” said Brett, smiling.

  “More pain?” she asked with a little start. “Something else?”

  “No. More happiness.”

  “Ah, no! There is no more!”

  “Yes there is. Listen. There is a reason why the story could not be true, why it is absolutely impossible that it should be true.”

  “Impossible?” She looked up suddenly. “You cannot say that.”

  “Yes I can,” he answered. “We have seen the last of John Darche. He will never come back.”

  “Never?” cried Marion. “Never at all? What do you mean?”

  “Never, in this world,” Brett answered gravely.

  She seized his arm with sudden energy and looked into his face.

  “What? No — it cannot be true! Oh, do not deceive me, for the love of Heaven!”

  “John Darche is dead.”

  “Dead!” In the pause that followed, she pressed her hand to her side as though she could not draw breath.

  “Oh! no! no — it cannot be true. It is another story. Oh, why did you tell me?”

  “It is true. The man who was with him when he died was here a moment ago.”

  “Ah, you were right,” she said faintly. “It is almost too much.”

  Brett’s arm went round her and drew her towards him.

  “No,” he answered, speaking gently in her ear, “not too much for you and me to bear together. Think of all that has died with him — think of all the horror and misery and danger and fear that he has taken out of the world with him. Think that there is nothing now between you and me. Nothing — not the shadow of a nothing. That our lives are our own now, and each the other’s, yours mine, mine yours, forever and always. Ah, Marion, dear, is that too much to bear?”

  “Almost,” she said as her head sank upon his shoulder. “Ah, God! that hell and heaven should be so near.”

  “And such a heaven! Love! Darling! Sweetheart! Look at me!”

  “Harry!” She opened her eyes. “Love! No — find me other words for all you are to me.”

  She drew his face down to hers and their lips met.

  THE END

  Katharine Lauderdale

  Crawford began to write Katharine Lauderdale and its sequel The Ralstons (1895) in the autumn of 1893 and had finished them by the end of the year. The author had spent the summer travelling around Europe, where he visited Austria, Yugoslavia and Constantinople (Istanbul). In the autumn, he returned to America in order to help his father-in-law, Hiram Berdan, the famous inventor of the ‘Berdan rifle’, in his law suit against the US government. Crawford suffered from severe depression during his time in America and eventually left again for Italy in the summer of 1894.

  Katharine Lauderdale was first published by Macmillan & Co in London and New York in March 1894. The narrative explores Crawford’s perspective on the emerging and changing nature of the American city of the late nineteenth century. The book centres on the romantic relationship between John Ralston and his cousin Katharine Lauderdale. They descend from an old upper-class family, but no longer possess much wealth and John’s drinking and lack of employment mean that Katharine’s closest relatives, particularly her frugal father, object to their marriage. Crawford is overtly critical of a shifting social order, which increasing
ly dictates that money and material wealth should be the only important criteria of determining status. He also expresses his disdain for what he perceives as the decadence and feminization of the art world at the fin de siècle.

  The first edition

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I.

  CHAPTER II.

  CHAPTER III.

  CHAPTER IV.

  CHAPTER V.

  CHAPTER VI.

  CHAPTER VII.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  CHAPTER IX.

  CHAPTER X.

  CHAPTER XI.

  CHAPTER XII.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  CHAPTER XV.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  CHAPTER XX.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  CHAPTER XXV.

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  CHAPTER XXX.

  Crawford’s father-in-law, Hiram Berdan

  CHAPTER I.

  “I PREFER THE dark style, myself — like my cousin,” said John Ralston, thoughtfully.

  “And you will therefore naturally marry a fair woman,” answered his companion, Hamilton Bright, stopping to look at the display in a florist’s window. Ralston stood still beside him.

  “Queer things — orchids,” he observed.

  “Why?” Nothing in the world seemed queer or unnatural to Bright, who was normally constituted in all respects, and had accepted the universe without comment.

  “I am not sure why. I think the soul must look like an orchid.”

  “You are as bad as a Boston girl,” laughed Bright. “Always thinking of your soul! Why should the soul be like an orchid, any more than like a banana or a turnip?”

  “It must be like something,” said Ralston, in explanation.

  “If it’s anything, it’s faith in a gaseous state, my dear man, and therefore even less visible and less like anything than the common or market faith, so to say — the kind you get at from ten cents to a dollar the seat’s worth, on Sundays, according to the charge at the particular place of worship your craving for salvation leads you to frequent.”

  “I prefer to take mine in a more portable shape,” answered Ralston, grimly. “By the bottle — not by the seat — and very dry.”

  “Yes — if you go on, you’ll get one sort of faith — the lively evidence of things unseen — snakes, for instance.”

  Bright laughed again as he spoke, but he glanced at his friend with a look of interest which had some anxiety in it. John Ralston was said to drink, and Bright was his good angel, ever striving to be entertained unawares, and laughing when he was found out in his good intentions. But if Bright was a very normal being, Ralston was a very abnormal one, and was, to some extent, a weak man, though not easily influenced by strong men. A glance at his face would have convinced any one of that — a keen, nervous, dark face, with those deep lines from the nostrils to the corners of the mouth which denote uncertain, and even dangerous tempers — a square, bony jaw, aggressive rather than firm, but not coarse — the nose, aquiline but delicate — the eyes, brown, restless, and bright, the prominence of the temples concealing the eyelids entirely when raised — the forehead, broad, high, and visibly lean like all the features — the hair, black and straight — the cheek bones, moderately prominent. Possibly John Ralston had a dash of the Indian in his physical inheritance, which showed itself, as it almost always does, in a melancholic disposition, great endurance and an unnatural love of excitement in almost any shape, together with an inborn idleness which it was hard to overcome.

  Nothing is more difficult than to convey by words what should be understood by actual seeing. There are about fifteen hundred million human beings alive to-day, no two of whom are exactly alike, and we have really but a few hundreds of words with which to describe any human being at all. The argument that a few octaves of notes furnish all the music there is, cannot be brought against us as a reproach. We cannot speak a dozen words at once and produce a single impression, any more than we can put the noun before the article as we may strike any one note before or after another. So I have made acknowledgment of inability to do the impossible, and apology for not being superhuman.

  John Ralston was dark, good-looking, nervous, excitable, enduring, and decidedly dissipated, at the age of five and twenty years, which he had lately attained at the time of the present tale. Of his other gifts, peculiarities and failings, his speech, conversation and actions will give an account. As for his position in life, he was the only son of Katharine Ralston, widow of Admiral Ralston of the United States Navy, who had been dead several years.

  Mrs. Ralston’s maiden name had been Lauderdale, and she was of Scotch descent. Her cousin, Alexander Lauderdale, married a Miss Camperdown, a Roman Catholic girl of a Kentucky family, and had two children, both daughters, the elder of whom was Mrs. Benjamin Slayback, wife of the well-known member of Congress. The younger was Katharine Lauderdale, named after her father’s cousin, Mrs. Ralston, and she was the dark cousin whom John admired.

  Hamilton Bright was a distant relative to both of these persons. But by his father’s side he had not originally belonged to New York, as the others did, but had settled there after spending some years of his early youth in California and Nevada, and had gone into business. At four and thirty he was the junior partner in the important firm of Beman Brothers and Company, Bankers, who had a magnificent building of their own in Broad Street, and were very solidly prosperous, having shown themselves to be among the fittest to survive the financial storms of the last half century. Ralston’s friend was a strong, squarely built, very fair man, of what is generally called the Saxon type. At first sight, he inspired confidence, and his clear blue eyes were steady and true. He had that faculty of looking almost superhumanly neat and spotless under all circumstances, which is the prerogative of men with straight, flaxen hair, pink and white complexions, and perfect teeth. It was easy to predict that he would become too stout with advancing years, and he was already a heavy man, though not more than half an inch taller than his friend and distant cousin, John Ralston. But no one would have believed at first sight that he was nine years older than the latter.

  The nature of friendship between men has been almost as much discussed as that of love between man and woman, but with very different results. He laughs at the idea of friendship who turns a little pale at the memory of love. At all events, most of us feel that friendship is generally a less certain and undeniable thing, inasmuch as it is harder to exclude from it the element of personal interest and advantage. The fact probably is, that no one person can possibly combine all the elements supposed to make up what every one means by friendship. It would be far more reasonable to construct one friendship out of many persons, securing in each of them one at least of the qualities necessary. For instance, the discreet man, to whom it is safe to tell secrets when they must be told at all, is not as a matter of course the man most capable of giving the best advice; nor, if a certain individual is extremely generous and ready to lend all he has to his friend, does it follow that he possesses the tough, manly nature that will face public scorn rather than abandon that friend in his hour of need. Some men, too, want sympathy in their troubles, and will have it, even at the cost of common sense. Others need encouragement; others, again, need most of all to be told the unpleasant truth about themselves in the most pleasant form practicable. Altogether it seems probable that the ideal friend must either be an altogether superhuman personage, or a failure in so far as his own life is concerned.

  Hamilton Bright approached as nearly to that ideal as his humanity would allow. He did not in the least trouble himself to find out why he liked Ralston, and wished to be of service to him, and he wisely asked for nothing whatever in return for wh
at he gave. But he was very far from looking up to him, and perhaps even from respecting him as he wished that he might. He simply liked him better than other men, and stood by him when he needed help, which often happened.

  They left the florist’s window and walked slowly up Fifth Avenue. John Ralston was a born New Yorker and preferred his own city to any other place in the world with that solid, satisfactory, unreasoning prejudice which belongs especially to New Yorkers and Parisians, and of which it is useless to attempt any explanation. Hamilton Bright, on the contrary, often wished himself away, and in spite of his excessively correct appearance even the easy formality of American metropolitan life was irksome to him. He had loved the West, and in the midst of great interests and advantages, he regretted his former existence and daily longed for the clearer air and bolder breath of Nevada. The only objects about which he ever displayed much enthusiasm were silver and cattle, about which Ralston knew nothing and cared less.

  “When is it to be?” asked Bright after a long silence.

  Ralston looked at him quickly.

  “What?” he asked in a short tone.

  Bright did not answer at once, and when he spoke his voice was rather dull and low.

  “When are you going to be married? Everybody knows that you are engaged.”

  “Then everybody is wrong. I am not engaged.”

  “Oh — I thought you were. All right.”

  Another pause followed and they walked on.

  “Alexander Junior said I was a failure,” observed Ralston at last. “That was some time ago.”

  “Oh — was that the trouble?”

  Bright did not seem to expect any reply to the question, but his tone was thoughtful.

  “Yes,” answered Ralston, with a short, discontented laugh. “He said that I was of no use whatever, that I never did anything and never should.”

  “That settled it, I suppose.”