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CHAPTER XXVI. THE END OF THE FIRST ACT

THE point discussed in our last chapter, if not a momentous one in itself, was destined to exercise a very important influence upon the fortunes of the Onslow family. The interview between Sir Stafford and the Viscount scarcely occupied five minutes; after which the Baronet wrote a note of some length to her Ladyship, to which she as promptly replied; a second, and even a third interchange of correspondence followed. The dinner-party appointed for that day was put off; a certain ominous kind of silence pervaded the house. The few privileged visitors were denied admission. Mr. Proctor, Sir Stafford’s man, wore a look of more than common seriousness. Mademoiselle Celestine’s glances revealed a haughty sense of triumph. Even the humbler menials appeared to feel that something had occurred, and betrayed in their anxious faces some resemblance to that vague sense of half-curiosity, half-terror, the passengers of a steamboat experience when an accident, of whose nature they know nothing, has occurred to the machinery.

Their doubts and suspicions assumed more shape when the order came that Sir Stafford would dine in the library, and her Ladyship in her own room, George Onslow alone appearing in the dining-room. There was an air of melancholy over everything, the silence deepening as night came on. Servants went noiselessly to and fro, drew the curtains, and closed the doors with a half-stealthy gesture, and seemed as though fearful of awakening some slumbering outbreak of passion.

We neither have, nor desire to have, secrets from our readers. We will therefore proceed to Sir Stafford’s dressing-room, where the old Baronet sat moodily over the fire, his anxious features and sorrow-struck expression showing the ravages even a few hours of suffering had inflicted. His table was littered with papers, parchments, and other formidable-looking documents. Some letters lay sealed here, others were half-written there; everything about him showed the conflict of doubt and indecision that was going on within his mind; and truly a most painful struggle was maintained there.

For some time back he had seen with displeasure the course of extravagance and waste of all his household. He had observed the habits of reckless expense with which his establishment was maintained; but, possessing a very ample fortune, and feeling that probably some change would be made with the coming summer, he had forborne to advert to it, and endured with what patience he could a mode of life whose very display was distasteful to him. Now, however, a more serious cause for anxiety presented itself, in the class of intimates admitted by Lady Hester to her society. Of the foreigners he knew comparatively little; but that little was not to their advantage. Some were wealthy voluptuaries, glad to propagate their own habits of extravagance among those they suspected of fortunes smaller than their own. Others were penniless adventurers, speculating upon everything that might turn to their profit. All were men of pleasure, and of that indolent, lounging, purposeless character so peculiarly unpleasing to those who have led active lives, and been always immersed in the cares and interests of business.

Such men, he rightly judged, were dangerous associates to his son, the very worst acquaintances for Kate, in whom already he was deeply interested; but still no actual stain of dishonor, no palpable flaw, could be detected in their fame, till the arrival of Lord Norwood added his name to the list.

To receive a man of whose misconduct in England he had acquired every proof, was a step beyond his endurance. Here or never must he take his stand; and manfully he did so, at first, by calm argument and remonstrance, and at last by firm resolution and determination. Without adverting to what had passed between the Viscount and himself, the letter he addressed to Lady Hester conveyed his unalterable resolve not to know Lord Norwood. Lady Hester’s reply was not less peremptory, and scarcely as courteous. The correspondence continued with increasing warmth on both sides, till Sir Stafford palpably hinted at the possible consequences of a spirit of discordance and disagreement so ill-adapted to conjugal welfare. Her Ladyship caught up the suggestion with avidity, and professed that, whatever scruples his delicacy might feel, to hers there was none in writing the word, “Separation.”

If the thought had already familiarized itself to his mind, the word had not; and strange it is that the written syllables should have a power and meaning that the idea itself could never realize.

To men who have had little publicity in their lives, and that little always of an honorable nature, there is no thought so poignantly miserable as the dread of a scandalous notoriety. To associate their names with anything that ministers to gossip; to make them tea-table talk; still worse, to expose them to sneering and impertinent criticisms, by revealing the secrets of their domesticity, is a torture to which no mere physical suffering has anything to compare. Sir Stafford Onslow was a true representative of this class of feeling. The sight of his name in the list of directors of some great enterprise, as the patron of a charity, the governor of an hospital, or the donor to an institution, was about as much of newspaper notoriety as he could bear without a sense of shrinking delicacy; but to become the mark for public discussion in the relations of his private life, to have himself and his family brought up to the bar of that terrible ordeal, where bad tongues are the eloquent, and evil speakers are the witty, was a speculation too terrible to think over; and this was exactly what Lady Hester was suggesting!

Is it not very strange that woman, with whose nature we inseparably and truly associate all those virtues that take their origin in refinement and modesty, should sometimes be able to brave a degree of publicity to which a man, the very hardiest and least shamefaced, would succumb, crestfallen and abashed; that her timid delicacy, her shrinking bashfulness, can be so hardened by the world that she can face a notoriety where every look is an indictment, and every whisper a condemnation?

Now, if Lady Hester was yet remote from this, she had still journeyed one stage of the road. She had abundant examples around her of those best received and best looked on in society, whose chief claim to the world’s esteem seemed to be the contempt with which they treated all its ordinances. There was a dash of heroism in their effrontery that pleased her. They appeared more gay, more buoyant, more elastic in spirits than other people; their increased liberty seemed to impart enlarged and more generous views, and they were always “good-natured,” since, living in the very glassiest of houses, they never “shied” a pebble.

While, then, Sir Stafford sat overwhelmed with shame and sorrow at the bare thought of the public discussion that awaited him, Lady Hester was speculating upon condolences here, approbation there, panegyrics upon her high spirit, and congratulations upon her freedom. The little, half-shadowy allusions her friends would throw out from time to time upon the strange unsuitableness of her marriage with a man so much her senior, would soon be converted into comments of unrestricted license. Besides and perhaps the greatest charm of all was she would have a grievance; not the worn-out grievance of some imaginary ailment that nobody believes in but the “doctor,” not the mock agonies of a heart complaint, that saves the sufferer from eating bad dinners in vulgar company, but always allows them a respite for a dejeuner at the court, or a supper after the Opera, with a few chosen convives, but a real, substantial grievance, over which men might be eloquent and ladies pathetic. Such were the different feelings with which two persons contemplated the same event. Sir Stafford’s thoughts turned instantly towards England. What would be said there by all those friends who had endeavored to dissuade him from this ill-suited union? Their sorrowful compassion was even less endurable than the malice of others; and Grounsell, too, what would his old friend think of a catastrophe so sudden? In his heart Sir Stafford was glad that the doctor was absent; much as he needed his counsel and advice, he still more dreaded the terror of his triumphant eye at the accomplishment of his oft-repeated prediction.

From George he met no support whatever. He either believed, or thought that he believed, Norwood’s garbled explanation. Intercourse with a certain set of “fast men” had shown him that a man might do a “screwy” thing now and then, and yet not be cut by his acquaintance. And the young Guardsman deemed his father’s rigid notions nothing but prejudices, very excellent and commendable ones, no doubt, but as inapplicable to our present civilization as would be a coat of mail or a back-piece of chain-armor. George Onslow, therefore, halted between the two opinions. Adhering to his father’s side from feelings of affection and respect, he was drawn to Lady Hester’s by his convictions; not, indeed, aware how formidable the difference had already become between them, and that, before that very night closed in, they had mutually agreed upon a separation, which while occupying the same house, was essentially to exclude all intercourse.

One consideration gave Sir Stafford much painful thought. What was to become of Kate Dalton in this new turn of affairs? The position of a young girl on a visit with a family living in apparent unity and happiness was very wide apart from her situation as the companion of a woman separated, even thus much, from her husband. It would be equally unfair to her own family, as unjust to the girl herself, to detain her then in such a conjuncture. And yet what was to be done? Apart from all the unpleasantness of proposing an abrupt return to her home, came the thought of the avowal that must accompany the suggestion, the very confession he so dreaded to make. Of course the gossiping of servants would soon circulate the rumor. But then they might not spread it beyond the Alps, nor make it the current talk of a German watering-place. Thus were his selfish feelings at war with higher and purer thoughts. But the struggle was not a long one. He sat down and wrote to Lady Hester. Naturally assuming that all the reasons which had such force for himself would weigh equally with her, he dwelt less upon the arguments for Kate’s departure than upon the mode in which it might be proposed and carried out. He adverted with feeling to the sacrifice the loss would inflict upon Lady Hester, but professed his conviction in the belief that all merely selfish considerations would give way before higher and more important duties.

“As it is,” said he, “I fear much that we have done anything but conduce to this dear girl’s welfare and happiness. We have shown her glimpses of a life whose emptiness she cannot appreciate, but by whose glitter she is already attracted. We have exposed her to all the seductions of flattery, pampering a vanity which is perhaps her one only failing. We have doubtless suggested to her imagination dreams of a future never to be realized, and we must now consign her to a home where all the affections of fond relatives will be unequal to the task of blinding her to its poverty and its obscurity. And yet even this is better than to detain her here. It shall be my care to see in what way I can I was about to write ‘recompense;’ nor would the word be unsuitable recompense Mr. Dalton for the injury we have done him as regards his child; and if you have any suggestion to make me on this head, I will gladly accept it.”

The note concluded with some hints as to the manner of making the communication to Kate, the whole awkwardness of which Sir Stafford, if need were, would take upon himself.

The whole temper of the letter was feeling and tender. Without even in the most remote way adverting to what had occurred between Lady Hester and himself, he spoke of their separation simply in its relation to Kate Dalton, for whom they were both bound to think and act with caution. As if concentrating every thought upon her, he did not suffer any other consideration to interfere. Kate, and Kate only, was all its theme.

Lady Hester, however, read the lines in a very different spirit. She had just recovered from a mesmeric trance, into which, to calm her nervous exaltation, her physician, Dr. Buccellini, had thrown her. She had been lying in a state of half-hysterical apathy for some hours, all volition, almost all vitality, suspended, under the influence of an exaggerated credulity, when the letter was laid upon the table.

“What is that your maid has just left out of her hand?” asked the doctor, in a tone of semi-imperiousness.

“A letter, a sealed letter,” replied she, mystically waving her hand before her half-closed eyes.

The doctor gave a look of triumph at the bystanders, and went on:

“Has the letter come from a distant country, or from a correspondent near at hand?”

“Near!” said she, with a shudder.

“Where is the writer at this moment?” asked he.

“In the house,” said she, with another and more violent shuddering.

“I now take the letter in my hand,” said the doctor, “and what am I looking at?”

“A seal with two griffins supporting a spur.”

The doctor showed the letter on every side, with a proud and commanding gesture. “There is a name written in the corner of the letter, beneath the address. Do you know that name?”

A heavy, thick sob was the reply.

“There there be calm, be still,” said he, majestically motioning with both hands towards her; and she immediately became composed and tranquil. “Are the contents of this letter such as will give you pleasure?”

A shake of the head was the answer.

“Are they painful?”

“Very painful,” said she, pressing her hand to her temples.

“Will these tidings be productive of grand consequences?”

“Yes, yes!” cried she, eagerly.

“What will you do, when you read them?”

“Act!” ejaculated she, solemnly.

“In compliance with the spirit, or in rejection?”

“Rejection!”

“Sleep on, sleep on,” said the doctor, with a wave of his hand; and, as he spoke, her head drooped, her arm fell listlessly down, and her long and heavy breathing denoted deep slumber. “There are people, Miss Dalton,” said he to Kate, “who affect to see nothing in mesmerism but deception and trick, whose philosophy teaches them to discredit all that they cannot comprehend. I trust you may never be of this number.”

“It is very wonderful, very strange,” said she, thoughtfully.

“Like all the secrets of nature, its phenomena are above belief; yet, to those who study them with patience and industry, how compatible do they seem with the whole order and spirit of creation. The great system of vitality being a grand scheme of actionary and reactionary influences, the centrifugal being in reality the centripetal, and those impulses we vainly fancy to be our own instincts being the impressions of external forces do you comprehend me?”

“Not perfectly; in part, perhaps,” said she, diffidently.

“Even that is something,” replied he, with a bland smile. “One whose future fortunes will place her in a station to exert influence is an enviable convert to have brought to truth.”

“I!” said she, blushing with shame and surprise together; “surely you mistake, sir. I am neither born to rank, nor like to attain it.”

“Both one and the other, young lady,” said he, solemnly; “high as your position will one day be, it will not be above the claims of your descent. It is not on fallible evidence that I read the future.”

“And can you really predict my fortune in life?” asked she, eagerly.

“More certainly than you would credit it, when told,” said he, deliberately.

“How I should like to hear it; how I should like to know” She stopped, and a deep blush covered her face.

“And why should you not know that your dreams will be realized?” said he, hastily, as if speaking from some irresistible impulse. “What more natural than to desire a glance, fleeting though it be, into that black vista where the bright lightning of prophecy throws its momentary splendor?”

“And how know you that I have had dreams?” said she, innocently.

“I know of them but by their accomplishment. I see you not in the present or the past, but in the future. There your image is revealed to me, and surrounded by a splendor I cannot describe. It is gorgeous and barbaric in magnificence; there is something feudal in the state by which you are encompassed that almost speaks of another age.”

“This is mere dreamland, indeed,” said she, laughing.

“Nay, not so; nor is it all bright and glorious, as you think. There are shadows of many a dark tint moving along the sunlit surface.”

“But how know you all this?” asked she, half incredulously.

“As you slept last evening in a mesmeric slumber on that sofa; but I will hear no further questioning. Look to our patient here, and if that letter agitate her over-much, let me be sent for.” And, with these words, delivered oracularly, the doctor left the room, while Kate seated herself beside the sofa where Lady Hester slept.

It was late in the night when Lady Hester awoke, and soon remembering that a letter had arrived, broke the seal and read it. If the proposal of Sir Stafford was in every way unacceptable, there was something which compensated for all in the excitement of spirits an act of opposition was sure to produce; nor was it without a sense of triumph that she read lines penned in evident sorrow and depression of spirit. In fact, she made the not uncommon error of mistaking sorrow for repentance, and thought she perceived in her husband’s tone a desire to retrace his steps. It is difficult to say whether such an amende would have given her pleasure; certainly she would not have accepted it without subjecting him to a term of probation of more or less length. In any case, as regarded Kate, she was decided at once upon a positive refusal; and as, with her, a resolve and a mode of action were usually the work of the same moment, she motioned to Kate to sit down beside her on the sofa, and passing her arm around her, drew her fondly towards her.

“Kate, dearest,” said she, “I ‘m sure nothing would induce you to leave me, I mean, to desert and forsake me.”

Kate pressed the hand she held in her own to her lips with fervor, but could not speak for emotion.

“I say this,” said Lady Hester, rapidly, “because the moment has come to test your fidelity. Sir Stafford and I it is needless to state how and by what means have at last discovered, what I fancy the whole world has seen for many a day, that we were totally unsuited to each other, in taste, age, habit, feeling, mode of life, and thought; that we have nothing in common, neither liking nor detesting the same things, but actually at variance upon every possible subject and person. Of course-all attempt to cover such discrepancies must be a failure. We might trump up a hollow truce, child, but it never could be an alliance; and so we have thought, I ‘m sure it is well that we have hit upon even one topic for agreement, we have thought that the best, indeed the only, thing we could do, was to separate.”

An exclamation, almost like an accent of pain, escaped Kate at these words.

“Yes, dearest,” resumed Lady Hester, “it was his own proposal, made in the very coldest imaginable fashion; for men have constantly this habit, and always take the tone of dignity when they are about to do an injustice. All this, however, I was prepared for, and could suffer without complaint; but he desires to rob me of you, my dear child, to deprive me of the only friend, the only confidante I have in the world. I don’t wonder that you grow pale and look shocked at such cruelty, concealed, as it is, under the mask of care for your interests and regard for your welfare; and this to me, dearest, to me, who feel to you as to a sister, a dear, dear sister!” Here Lady Hester drew Kate towards her, and kissed her twice, affectionately. “There ‘s his letter, my sweet child. You can read it; or better, indeed, that you should not, if you would preserve any memory of your good opinion of him.”

“And he that was ever so kind, so thoughtful, and so generous!” cried Kate.

“You know nothing of these creatures, my dear,” broke in Lady Hester. “All those plausibilities that they play off in the world are little emanations of their own selfish natures. They are eternally craving admiration from us women, and that is the true reason of their mock kindness and mock generosity! I ‘m sure,” added she, sighing, “my experience has cost me pretty dearly! What a life of trial and privation has mine been!”

Lady Hester sighed heavily as her jewelled fingers pressed to her eyes a handkerchief worth a hundred guineas, and really believed herself a case for world-wide sympathy. She actually did shed a tear or two over her sorrows; for it is wonderful on what slight pretension we can compassionate ourselves. She thought over all the story of her life, and wept. She remembered how she had been obliged to refuse the husband of her choice; she forgot to be grateful for having escaped a heartless spendthrift, she remembered her acceptance of one inferior to her in rank, and many years her senior; but forgot his wealth, his generosity, his kindliness of nature, and his high character. She thought of herself as she was at eighteen, the flattered beauty, daughter of a Peer, courted, sought after, and admired; but she totally forgot what she was at thirty, with faded attractions, unthought of, and, worse still, unmarried. Of the credit side of her account with Fortune she omitted not an item; the debits she slurred over as unworthy of mention. That she should be able to deceive herself is nothing very new or strange, but that she should succeed in deceiving another is indeed singular; and such was the case. Kate listened to her, and believed everything; and when her reason failed to convince, her natural softness of disposition served to satisfy her that a more patient, long-suffering, unrepining being never existed than Lady Hester Onslow.

“And now,” said she, after a long peroration of woes, “can you leave me here, alone and friendless? will you desert me?”

“Oh, never, never!” cried Kate, kissing her hand and pressing her to her heart. “I would willingly lay down my life to avert this sad misfortune; but, if that cannot be, I will share your lot with the devotion of my whole heart.”

Lady Hester could scarcely avoid smiling at the poor girl’s simplicity, who really fancied that separation included a life of seclusion and sorrow, with restricted means and an obscure position; and it was with a kind of subdued drollery she assured Kate that even in her altered fortunes a great number of little pleasures and comforts would remain for them. In fact, by degrees the truth came slowly out, that the great change implied little else than unrestrained liberty of action, freedom to go anywhere, know any one, and be questioned by nobody; the equivocal character of the position adding a piquancy to the society, inexpressibly charming to all those who, like the Duchesse d’Abrantes, think it only necessary for a thing to be “wrong” to make it perfectly delightful.

Having made a convert of Kate, Lady Hester briefly replied to Sir Stafford, that his proposition was alike repugnant to Miss Dalton as to herself, that she regretted the want of consideration on his part, which could have led him to desire that she should be friendless at a time when the presence of a companion was more than ever needed. This done, she kissed Kate three or four times affectionately, and retired to her room, well satisfied with what the day had brought forth, and only wishing for the morrow, which should open her new path in life.

It often happens in life that we are never sufficiently struck with the force of our own opinions or their consequences, till, from some accident or other, we come to record them. Then it is that the sentiments we have expressed, and the lines of action adopted, suddenly come forth in all their unvarnished truth. Like the images which the painter, for the first time, commits to canvas, they stand out to challenge a criticism which, so long as they remained in mere imagination, they had escaped.

This was precisely Kate Dalton’s case now. Her natural warm-heartedness, and her fervent sense of gratitude, had led her to adopt Lady Hester’s cause as her own; generous impulses, carrying reason all before them, attached her to what she fancied to be the weaker side. “The divinity that doth hedge – ” “beauty – ” made her believe that so much loveliness could do no wrong; nor was it till she came to write of the event to her sister, that even a doubt crossed her mind on the subject. The difficulty of explaining a circumstance of which she knew but little, was enhanced by her knowledge of Ellen’s rigid and unbending sense of right. “Poor dear Nelly,” said she, “with her innocence of mind, will understand nothing of all this, or she will condemn Lady Hester at once. Submission to her husband would, in her opinion, have been the first of duties. She cannot appreciate motives which actuate society in a rank different from her own. In her ignorance of the world, too, she might deem my remaining here unadvisable; she might counsel my return to home; and thus I should be deserting, forsaking, the dear friend who has confided all her sorrows to my heart, and reposes all her trust in my fidelity. This would break Lady Hester’s heart and my own together; and yet nothing is more likely than such a course. Better a thousand times not expose her friend’s cause to such a casualty. A little time and a little patience may place matters in a position more intelligible and less objectionable; and, after all, the question is purely a family secret, the divulgence of which, even to a sister, is perhaps not warrantable.”

Such were among the plausibilities with which she glanced over her conduct; without, however, satisfying herself that she was in the right. She had only begun the descent of lax morality, and her head was addled by the new sensation. Happy are they who even from weak nerves relinquish the career!

Kate’s letter home, then, was full of gay revelations. Galleries, churches, gardens; objects of art or historic interest; new pictures of manners, sketches of society, abounded. There were descriptions of fetes, too, and brilliant assemblies, with great names of guests and gorgeous displays of splendor. Well and sweetly were they written; a quick observation and a keen insight into character in every line. The subtle analysis of people and their pretensions, which comes of mixture with the world, was preeminent in all she said; while a certain sharp wit pointed many of the remarks, and sparkled in many a brilliant passage.

It was altogether a lively and a pleasant letter. A stranger, reading ft, would have pronounced the writer clever and witty; a friend would have regretted the want of personal details, the hundred little traits of egoism that speak confidence and trust. But to a sister! and such a sister as Nelly! it was, indeed, barren! No outpouring of warm affection; no fond memory of home; no reference to that little fireside whence her own image had never departed, and where her presence was each night invoked.

Oh! Kate, has Hanserl’s dark prophecy thrown its shadow already to your feet? Can a young heart be so easily corrupted, and so soon?