Book: The Evil Genius

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On the day after the dinner which had so deplorably failed, in
respect of one of the guests invited, to fulfill Catherine's
anticipations, there was a festival at the Palace. It had proved
so generally attractive to the guests at the hotel that the
grounds were almost deserted.

As the sun declined, on a lovely summer evening, the few invalids
feebly wandering about the flower-beds, or resting under the
trees, began to return to the house in dread of the dew.
Catherine and her child, with the nursemaid in attendance, were
left alone in the garden. Kitty found her mother, as she openly
declared, "not such good company as usual." Since the day when
her grandmother had said the fatal words which checked all
further allusion to her father, the child had shown a disposition
to complain, if she was not constantly amused. She complained of
Mrs. Presty now.

"I think grandmamma might have taken me to the Crystal Palace,"
she said.

"My dear, your grandmamma has friends with her--ladies and
gentlemen who don't care to be troubled with a child."

Kitty received this information in a very unamiable spirit. "I
hate ladies and gentlemen!" she said.

"Even Captain Bennydeck?" her mother asked.

"No; I like my nice Captain. And I like the waiters. They would
take me to the Crystal Palace--only they're always busy. I wish
it was bedtime; I don't know what to do with myself."

"Take a little walk with Susan."

"Where shall I go?"

Catherine looked toward the gate which opened on the road, and
proposed a visit to the old man who kept the lodge.

Kitty shook her head. There was an objection to the old man. "He
asks questions; he wants to know how I get on with my sums. He's
proud of his summing; and he finds me out when I'm wrong. I don't
like the lodge-keeper."

Catherine looked the other way, toward the house. The pleasant
fall of water in the basin of the distant fountain was just
audible. "Go and feed the gold-fishes," she suggested.

This was a prospect of amusement which at once raised Kitty's
spirits. "That's the thing!" she cried, and ran off to the
fountain, with the nursemaid after her.

Catherine seated herself under the trees, and watched in solitude
the decline of the sun in a cloudless sky. The memory of the
happy years of her marriage had never been so sadly and
persistently present to her mind as at this time, when the choice
of another married life waited her decision to become an
accomplished fact. Remembrances of the past, which she had such
bitter reason to regret, and forebodings of the future, in which
she was more than half inclined to believe, oppressed her at one
and the same moment. She thought of the different circumstances,
so widely separated by time, under which Herbert (years ago) and
Bennydeck (twenty-four hours since) had each owned his love, and
pleaded for an indulgent hearing. Her mind contrasted the
dissimilar results.

Pressed by the faithless man who had so cruelly wronged her in
after-years, she only wondered why he had waited so long before h
e asked her to marry him. Addressed with equal ardor by that
other man, whose age, whose character, whose modest devotion
offered her every assurance of happiness that a woman could
desire, she had struggled against herself, and had begged him to
give her a day to consider. That day was now drawing to an end.
As she watched the setting sun, the phantom of her guilty husband
darkened the heavenly light; imbittered the distrust of herself
which made her afraid to say Yes; and left her helpless before
the hesitation which prevented her from saying No.

The figure of a man appeared on the lonely path that led to the
lodge gate.

Impulsively she rose from her seat as he advanced. She sat down
again. After that first act of indecision, the flutter of her
spirits abated; she was able to think.

To avoid him, after he had spared her at her own request, would
have been an act of ingratitude: to receive him was to place
herself once more in the false position of a woman too undecided
to know her own mind. Forced to choose between these
alternatives, her true regard for Bennydeck forbade her to think
of herself, and encouraged her to wait for him. As he came
nearer, she saw anxiety in his face and observed an open letter
in his hand. He smiled as he approached her, and asked leave to
take a chair at her side. At the same time, when he perceived
that she had noticed his letter, he put it away hurriedly in his
pocket.

"I hope nothing has happened to annoy you," she said.

He smiled again; and asked if she was thinking of his letter. "It
is only a report," he added, "from my second in command, whom I
have left in charge of my Home. He is an excellent man; but I am
afraid his temper is not proof against the ingratitude which we
sometimes meet with. He doesn't yet make allowances for what even
the best natures suffer, under the deteriorating influence of
self-distrust and despair. No, I am not anxious about the results
of this case. I forget all my anxieties (except one) when I am
with you."

His eyes told her that he was about to return to the one subject
that she dreaded. She tried--as women will try, in the little
emergencies of their lives--to gain time.

"I am interested about your Home," she said: "I want to know what
sort of place it is. Is the discipline very severe?"

"There is no discipline," he answered warmly. "My one object is
to be a friend to my friendless fellow-creatures; and my one way
of governing them is to follow the teaching of the Sermon on the
Mount. Whatever else I may remind them of, when they come to me,
I am determined not to remind them of a prison. For this
reason--though I pity the hardened wanderers of the streets, I
don't open my doors to them. Many a refuge, in which discipline
is inevitable, is open to these poor sinners already. My welcome
is offered to penitents and sufferers of another kind--who have
fallen from positions in life, in which the sense of honor has
been cultivated; whose despair is associated with remembrances
which I may so encourage, with the New Testament to help me, as
to lead them back to the religious influences under which their
purer and happier lives may have been passed. Here and there I
meet with disappointments. But I persist in my system of trusting
them as freely as if they were my own children; and, for the most
part, they justify my confidence in them. On the day--if it ever
comes--when I find discipline necessary, I shall suffer my
disappointment and close my doors."

"Is your house open," Catherine asked, "to men and women alike?"

He was eager to speak with her on a subject more interesting to
him even than his Home. Answering her question, in this frame of
mind, his thoughts wandered; he drew lines absently with his
walking-stick on the soft earth under the trees.

"The means at my disposal," he said, "are limited. I have been
obliged to choose between the men and the women."

"And you have chosen women?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because a lost woman is a more friendless creature than a lost
man."

"Do they come to you? or do you look for them?"

"They mostly come to me. There is one young woman, however, now
waiting to see me, whom I have been looking for. I am deeply
interested in her."

"Is it her beauty that interests you?"

"I have not seen her since she was a child. She is the daughter
of an old friend of mine, who died many years ago."

"And with that claim on you, you keep her waiting?"

"Yes."

He let his stick drop on the ground and looked at Catherine; but
he offered no explanation of his strange conduct. She was a
little disappointed. "You have been some time away from your
Home," she said; still searching for his reasons. "When do you go
back?"

"I go back," he answered, "when I know whether I may thank God
for being the happiest man living."

They were both silent.



Chapter XLIV.


Think of Consequences.


Catherine listened to the fall of water in the basin of the
fountain. She was conscious of a faint hope--a hope unworthy of
her--that Kitty might get weary of the gold-fishes, and might
interrupt them. No such thing happened; no stranger appeared on
the path which wound through the garden. She was alone with him.
The influences of the still and fragrant summer evening were
influences which breathed of love.

"Have you thought of me since yesterday?" he asked gently.

She owned that she had thought of him.

"Is there no hope that your heart will ever incline toward me?"

"I daren't consult my heart. If I had only to consider my own
feelings--" She stopped.

"What else have you to consider?"

"My past life--how I have suffered, and what I have to repent
of."

"Has your married life not been a happy one?" he asked.

"Not a happy one--in the end," she answered.

"Through no fault of yours, I am sure?"

"Through no fault of mine, certainly."

"And yet you said just now that you had something to repent of?"

"I was not thinking of my husband, Captain Bennydeck, when I said
that. If I have injured any person, the person is myself."

She was thinking of that fatal concession to the advice of her
mother, and to the interests of her child, which placed her in a
false position toward the honest man who loved her and trusted
her. If he had been less innocent in the ways of the world, and
not so devotedly fond of her, he might, little by little, have
persuaded Catherine to run the risk of shocking him by a
confession of the truth. As it was, his confidence in her raised
him high above the reach of suspicions which might have occurred
to other men. He saw her turn pale; he saw distress in her face,
which he interpreted as a silent reproach to him for the
questions he had asked.

"I hope you will forgive me?" he said simply.

She was astonished. "What have I to forgive?"

"My want of delicacy."

"Oh, Captain Bennydeck, you speak of one of your great merits as
if it were a fault! Over and over again I have noticed your
delicacy, and admired it."

He was too deeply in earnest to abandon his doubts of himself.

"I have ignorantly led you to think of your sorrows," he said;
"sorrows that I cannot console. I don't deserve to be forgiven.
May I make the one excuse in my power? May I speak of myself?"

She told him by a gesture that he had made a needless request.

"The life I have led," he resumed, "accounts, perhaps, in some
degree, for what is deficient in me. At school, I was not a
popular boy; I only made one friend, and he has long since been
numbered with the dead. Of my life at college, and afterward in
London, I dare not speak to you; I look back at it with horror.
My school-friend decided my choice of a profession; he went into
the navy. After a while, not knowing what else to do, I followed
his example. I liked the life--I may say the sea saved me. For
years, I was never on shore for more than a few weeks at a time.
I saw nothing of society; I was hardly ever in the company of
ladies. The next change in my life associated me with an Arctic
expedition. God forbid I should tell you of what men go through
who are lost in the regions of eternal ice! Let me only say I was
preserved--miraculously preserved--to profit by that dreadful
experience. It made a new man of me; it altered me ( I hope for
the better) into what I am now. Oh, I feel that I ought to have
kept my secret yesterday--I mean my daring to love you. I should
have waited till you knew more of me; till my conduct pleased you
perhaps, and spoke for me. You won't laugh, I am sure, if I
confess (at my age!) that I am inexperienced. Never till I met
you have I known what true love is--and this at forty years old.
How some people would laugh! I own it seems melancholy to me."

"No; not melancholy."

Her voice trembled. Agitation, which it was not a pain but a
luxury to feel, was gently taking possession of her. Where
another man might have seen that her tenderness was getting the
better of her discretion, and might have presumed on the
discovery, this man, innocently blind to his own interests, never
even attempted to take advantage of her. No more certain way
could have been devised, by the most artful lover, of touching
the heart of a generous woman, and making it his own. The
influence exerted over Catherine by the virtues of Bennydeck's
character--his unaffected kindness, his manly sympathy, his
religious convictions so deeply felt, so modestly restrained from
claiming notice--had been steadily increasing in the intimacy of
daily intercourse. Catherine had never felt his ascendancy over
her as strongly as she felt it now. By fine degrees, the warning
remembrances which had hitherto made her hesitate lost their hold
on her memory. Hardly conscious herself of what she was doing,
she began to search his feelings in his own presence. Such love
as his had been unknown in her experience; the luxury of looking
into it, and sounding it to its inmost depths, was more than the
woman's nature could resist.

"I think you hardly do yourself justice," she said. "Surely you
don't regret having felt for me so truly, when I told you
yesterday that my old friend had deserted me?"

"No, indeed!"

"Do you like to remember that you showed no jealous curiosity to
know who my friend was?"

"I should have been ashamed of myself if I had asked the
question."

"And did you believe that I had a good motive--a motive which you
might yourself have appreciated--for not telling you the name of
that friend?"

"Is he some one whom I know?"

"Ought you to ask me that, after what I have just said?"

"Pray forgive me! I spoke without thinking."

"I can hardly believe it, when I remember how you spoke to me
yesterday. I could never have supposed, before we became
acquainted with each other, that it was in the nature of a man to
understand me so perfectly, to be so gentle and so considerate in
feeling for my distress. You confused me a little, I must own, by
what you said afterward. But I am not sure that ought to be
severe in blaming you. Sympathy--I mean such sympathy as
yours--sometimes says more than discretion can always approve.
Have you not found it so yourself?"

"I have found it so with you."

"And perhaps I have shown a little too plainly how dependent I am
on you--how dreadful it would be to me if I lost you too as a
friend?"

She blushed as she said it. When the words had escaped her, she
felt that they might bear another meaning than the simple meaning
which she had attached to them. He took her hand; his doubts of
himself, his needless fear of offending her, restrained him no
longer.

"You can never lose me," he said, "if you will only let me be the
nearest friend that a woman can have. Bear with me, dearest! I
ask for so much; I have so little to offer in return. I dream of
a life with you which is perhaps too perfectly happy to be
enjoyed on earth. And yet, I cannot resign my delusion. Must my
poor heart always long for happiness which is beyond my reach? If
an overruling Providence guides our course through this world,
may we not sometimes hope for happier ends than our mortal eyes
can see?"

He waited a moment--and sighed--and dropped her hand. She hid her
face; she knew what it would tell him: she was ashamed to let him
see it.

"I didn't mean to distress you," he said sadly.

She let him see her face. For a moment only, she looked at
him--and then let silence tell him the rest.

His arms closed round her. Slowly, the glory of the sun faded
from the heavens, and the soft summer twilight fell over the
earth. "I can't speak," he whispered; "my happiness is too much
for me."

"Are you sure of your happiness?" she asked.

"Could I think as I am thinking now, if I were not sure of it?"

"Are you thinking of _me?_"

"Of you--and of all that you will be to me in the future. Oh, my
angel, if God grants us many years to come, what a perfect life I
see!"

"Tell me--what do you see?"

"I see a husband and wife who are all in all to each other. If
friends come to us, we are glad to bid them welcome; but we are
always happiest by ourselves."

"Do we live in retirement?"

"We live where you like best to live. Shall it be in the
country?"

"Yes! yes! You have spoken of the sea as you might have spoken of
your best friend--we will be near the sea. But I must not keep
you selfishly all to myself. I must remember how good you have
been to poor creatures who don't feel our happiness, and who need
your kindness. Perhaps I might help you? Do you doubt it?"

"I only doubt whether I ought to let you see what I have seen; I
am only afraid of the risk of making you unhappy. You tempt me to
run the risk. The help of a woman--and of such a woman as you
are--is the one thing I have wanted. Your influence would succeed
where my influence has often failed. How good, how thoughtful you
would be!"

"I only want to be worthy of you," she said, humbly. "When may I
see your Home?"

He drew her closer to him: tenderly and timidly he kissed her for
the first time. "It rests with you," he answered. "When will you
be my wife?"

She hesitated; he felt her trembling. "Is there any obstacle?" he
asked.

Before she could reply, Kitty's voice was heard calling to her
mother--Kitty ran up to them.

Catherine turned cold as the child caught her by the hand,
eagerly claiming her attention. All that she should have
remembered, all that she had forgotten in a few bright moments of
illusion, rose in judgment against her, and struck her mind
prostrate in an instant, when she felt Kitty's touch.

Bennydeck saw the change. Was it possible that the child's sudden
appearance had startled her? Kitty had something to say, and said
it before he could speak.

"Mamma, I want to go where the other children are going. Susan's
gone to her supper. You take me."

Her mother was not even listening. Kitty turned impatiently to
Bennydeck. "Why won't mamma speak to me?" she asked. He quieted
her by a word. "You shall go with me." His anxiety about
Catherine was more than he could endure. "Pray let me take you
back to the house," he said. "I am afraid you are not well."

"I shall be better directly. Do me a kindness--take the child!"

She spoke faintly and vacantly. Bennydeck hesitated. She lifted
her trembling hands in entreaty. "I beg you will leave me!" Her
voice, her manner, made it impossible to disobey. He turned
resignedly to Kitty and asked which way she wanted to go. The
child pointed down the path to one of the towers of the Crystal
Palace, visible in the distance. "The governess has taken the
others to see the company go away," she said; "I want to go too."

Bennydeck looked back before he lost sight of Catherine.

She remained seated, in the attitude in which he had left her. At
the further end of the path which led to the hotel, he thought he
saw a figure in the twilight, approaching from the house. There
would be help near, if Catherine wanted it.

His uneasy mind was in some degree relieved, as he and Kitty left
the garden together.



Chapter XLV.


Love Your Enemies.


She tried to think of Bennydeck.

Her eyes followed him as long as he was in sight, but her
thoughts wandered. To look at him now was to look at the little
companion walking by his side. Still, the child reminded her of
the living father; still, the child innocently tortured her with
the consciousness of deceit. The faithless man from whom the law
had released her, possessed himself of her thoughts, in spite of
the law. He, and he only, was the visionary companion of her
solitude when she was left by herself.

Did he remind her of the sin that he had committed?--of the
insult that he had inflicted on the woman whom he had vowed to
love and cherish? No! he recalled to her the years of love that
she had passed by his side; he upbraided her with the happiness
which she had owed to him, in the prime and glory of her life.
Woman! set _that_ against the wrong which I have done to you. You
have the right to condemn me, and Society has the right to
condemn me--but I am your child's father still. Forget me if you
can!

All thought will bear the test of solitude, excepting only the
thought that finds its origin in hopeless self-reproach. The soft
mystery of twilight, the solemn silence of the slowly-coming
night, daunted Catherine in that lonely place. She rose to return
to light and human beings. As she set her face toward the house,
a discovery confronted her. She was not alone.

A woman was standing on the path, apparently looking at her.

In the dim light, and at the distance between them, recognition
of the woman was impossible. She neither moved nor spoke.
Strained to their utmost point of tension, Catherine's nerves
quivered at the sight of that shadowy solitary figure. She
dropped back on the seat. In tones that trembled she said: "Who
are you? What do you want?"

The voice that answered was, like her own voice, faint with fear.
It said: "I want a word with you."

Moving slowly forward--stopping--moving onward again--hesitating
again--the woman at last approached. There was light enough left
to reveal her face, now that she was near. It was the face of
Sydney Westerfield.

The survival of childhood, in the mature human being, betrays
itself most readily in the sex that bears children. The chances
and changes of life show the child's mobility of emotion
constantly associating itself with the passions of the woman. At
the moment of recognition the troubled mind of Catherine was
instantly steadied, under the influence of that coarsest sense
which levels us with the animals--the sense of anger.

"I am amazed at your audacity," she said.

There was no resentment--there was only patient submission in
Sydney's reply.

"Twice I have approached the house in which you are living; and
twice my courage has failed me. I have gone away again--I have
walked, I don't know where, I don't know how far. Shame and fear
seemed to be insensible to fatigue. This is my third attempt. If
I was a little nearer to you, I think you would see what the
effort has cost me. I have not much to say. May I ask you to hear
me?"

"You have taken me by surprise, Miss Westerfield. You have no
right to do that; I refuse to hear you."

"Try, madam, to bear in mind that no unhappy creature, in my
place, would expose herself to your anger and contempt without a
serious reason. Will you think again?"

"No!"

Sydney turned to go away--and suddenly stopped.

Another person was advancing from the hotel; an interruption, a
trivial domestic interruption, presented itself. The nursemaid
had missed the child, and had come into the garden to see if she
was with her mother.

"Where is Miss Kitty, ma'am?" the girl asked.

Her mistress told her what had happened, and sent her to the
Palace to relieve Captain Bennydeck of the charge that he had
undertaken. Susan listened, looking at Sydney and recognizing the
familiar face. As the girl moved away, Sydney spoke to her.

"I hope little Kitty is well and happy?"

The mother does not live who could have resisted the tone in
which that question was put. The broken heart, the love for the
child that still lived in it, spoke in accents that even touched
the servant. She came back; remembering the happy days when the
governess had won their hearts at Mount Morven, and, for a moment
at least, remembering nothing else.

"Quite well and happy, miss, thank you," Susan said.

As she hurried away on her errand, she saw her mistress beckon to
Sydney to return, and place a chair for her. The nursemaid was
not near enough to hear what followed.

"Miss Westerfield, will you forget what I said just now?" With
those words, Catherine pointed to the chair. "I am ready to hear
you," she resumed--"but I have something to ask first. Does what
you wish to say to me relate only to yourself?"

"It relates to another person, as well as to myself."

That reply, and the inference to which it led, tried Catherine's
resolution to preserve her self-control, as nothing had tried it
yet.

"If that other person," she began, "means Mr. Herbert Linley--"

Sydney interrupted her, in words which she was entirely
unprepared to hear.

"I shall never see Mr. Herbert Linley again."

"Has he deserted you?"

"No. It is _I_ who have left _him._"

"You!"

The emphasis laid on that one word forced Sydney to assert
herself for the first time.

"If I had not left him of my own free will," she said, "what else
would excuse me for venturing to come here?"

Catherine's sense of justice felt the force of that reply. At the
same time her sense of injury set its own construction on
Sydney's motive. "Has his cruelty driven you away from him?" she
asked.

"If he has been cruel to me," Sydney answered, "do you think I
should have come here to complain of it to You? Do me the justice
to believe that I am not capable of such self-degradation as
that. I have nothing to complain of."

"And yet you have left him?"

"He has been all that is kind and considerate: he has done
everything that a man in his unhappy position could do to set my
mind at ease. And yet I have left him. Oh, I claim no merit for
my repentance, bitterly as I feel it! I might not have had the
courage to leave him--if he had loved me as he once loved you."

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