Book: The Evil Genius

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"Miss Westerfield, you are the last person living who ought to
allude to my married life."

"You may perhaps pardon the allusion, madam, when you have heard
what I have still to say. I owe it to Mr. Herbert Linley, if not
to you, to confess that his life with me has _not_ been a life of
happiness. He has tried, compassionately tried, to keep his
secret sorrow from discovery, and he has failed. I had long
suspected the truth; but I only saw it in his face when he found
the book you left behind you at the hotel. Your image has, from
first to last, been the one living image in his guilty heart. I
am the miserable victim of a man's passing fancy. You have been,
you are still, the one object of a husband's love. Ask your own
heart if the woman lives who can say to you what I have
said--unless she knew it to be true."

Catherine's head sank on her bosom; her helpless hands lay
trembling on her lap. Overpowered by the confession which she had
just heard--a confession which had followed closely on the
thoughts inspired by the appearance of the child--her agitation
was beyond control; her mind was unequal to the effort of
decision. The woman who had been wronged--who had the right to
judge for herself, and to speak for herself--was the silent woman
of the two!

It was not quite dark yet. Sydney could see as well as hear.

For the first time since the beginning of the interview, she
allowed the impulse of the moment to lead her astray. In her
eagerness to complete the act of atonement, she failed to
appreciate the severity of the struggle that was passing in
Catherine's mind. She alluded again to Herbert Linley, and she
spoke too soon.

"Will you let him ask your pardon?" she said. "He expects no
more."

Catherine's spirit was roused in an instant. "He expects too
much!" she answered, sternly. "Is he here by your connivance? Is
he, too, waiting to take me by surprise?"

"I am incapable, madam, of taking such a liberty with you as
that; I may perhaps have hoped to be able to tell him, by
writing, of a different reception--" She checked herself. "I beg
your pardon, if I have ventured to hope. I dare not ask you to
alter your opinion--"

"Do you dare to look the truth in the face?" Catherine
interposed. "Do you remember what sacred ties that man has
broken? what memories he has profaned? what years of faithful
love he has cast from him? Must I tell you how he poisoned his
wife's mind with doubts of his truth and despair of his honor,
when he basely deserted her? You talk of your repentance. Does
your repentance forget that he would still have been my blameless
husband but for you?"

Sydney silently submitted to reproach, silently endured the shame
that finds no excuse for itself.

Catherine looked at her and relented. The noble nature which
could stoop to anger, but never sink to the lower depths of
malice and persecution, restrained itself and made amends. "I say
it in no unkindness to you," she resumed. "But when you ask me to
forgive, consider what you ask me to forget. It will only
distress us both if we remain longer together," she continued,
rising as she spoke. "Perhaps you will believe that I mean well,
when I ask if there is anything I can do for you?"

"Nothing!"

All the desolation of the lost woman told its terrible tale in
that one word. Invited to rest herself in the hotel, she asked
leave to remain where she was; the mere effort of rising was too
much for her now. Catherine said the parting words kindly. "I
believe in your good intentions; I believe in your repentance."

"Believe in my punishment!" After that reply, no more was said.

Behind the trees that closed the view at the further extremity of
the lawn the moon was rising. As the two women lost sight of each
other, the new light, pure and beautiful, began to dawn over the
garden.



Chapter XLVI.


Nil Desperandum.


No horror of her solitude, no melancholy recollections, no dread
of the future disturbed Sydney's mind. The one sense left in her
was the sense of fatigue. Vacantly, mechanically, the girl rested
as a tired animal might have rested. She saw nothing, heard
nothing; the one feeling of which she was conscious was a dull
aching in every limb. The moon climbed the heavens, brightened
the topmost leaves of the trees, found the gloom in which Sydney
was hidden, and cheered it tenderly with radiant light. She was
too weary to sleep, too weary even to shade her face when the
moonbeams touched it. While the light still strengthened, while
the slow minutes still followed each other unheeded, the one
influence that could rouse Sydney found her at last--set her
faint heart throbbing--called her prostrate spirit to life again.
She heard a glad cry of recognition in a child's voice:

"Oh, Sydney, dear, is it you?"

In another instant her little pupil and playfellow of former days
was in her arms.

"My darling, how did you come here?"

Susan answered the question. "We are on our way back from the
Palace, miss. I am afraid," she said, timidly, "that we ought to
go in."

Silently resigned, Sydney tried to release the child. Kitty clung
to her and kissed her; Kitty set the nurse at defiance. "Do you
think I am going to leave Syd now I have found her? Susan, I am
astonished at you!"

Susan gave way. Where the nature is gentle, kindness and delicacy
go hand-in-hand together, undisturbed by the social
irregularities which beset the roadway of life. The nursemaid
drew back out of hearing. Kitty's first questions followed each
other in breathless succession. Some of them proved to be hard,
indeed, to answer truly, and without reserve. She inquired if
Sydney had seen her mother, and then she was eager to know why
Sydney had been left in the garden alone.

"Why haven't you gone back to the house with mamma?" she asked.

"Don't ask me, dear," was all that Sydney could say. Kitty drew
the inevitable conclusion: "Have you and mamma quarreled?"

"Oh, no!"

"Then come indoors with me."

"Wait a little, Kitty, and tell me something about yourself. How
do you get on with your lessons?"

"You dear foolish governess, do you expect me to learn my
lessons, when I haven't got you to teach me? Where have you been
all this long while? _I_ wouldn't have gone away and left _you!_"
She paused; her eager eyes studied Sydney's face with the
unrestrained curiosity of a child. "Is it the moonlight that
makes you look pale and wretched?" she said. "Or are you really
unhappy? Tell me, Syd, do you ever sing any of those songs that I
taught you, when you first came to us?"

"Never, dear!"

"Have you anybody to go out walking with you and running races
with you, as I did?"

"No, my sweet! Those days have gone by forever."

Kitty laid her head sadly on Sydney's bosom. "It's not the
moonlight," she said; "shall I tell you a secret? Sometimes I am
not happy either. Poor papa is dead. He always liked you--I'm
sure you are sorry for him."

Astonishment held Sydney speechless. Before she could ask who had
so cruelly deceived the child, and for what purpose, the
nursemaid, standing behind the chair, warned her to be silent by
a touch.

"I think we are all unhappy now," Kitty went on, still following
her own little train of thought. "Mamma isn't like what she used
to be. And even my nice Captain hasn't a word to say to me. He
wouldn't come back with us; he said he would go back by himself."

Another allusion which took Sydney by surprise! She asked who the
Captain was. Kitty started as if the question shocked her. "Oh
dear, dear, this is what comes of your going away and leaving us!
You don't know Captain Bennydeck."

The name of her father's correspondent! The name which she
vaguely remembered to have heard in her childhood! "Where did you
first meet with him?" she inquired.

"At the seaside, dear!"

"Do you mean at Sandyseal?"

"Yes. Mamma liked him--and grandmamma liked him (which is
wonderful)--and I gave him a kiss. Promise me not to tell! My
nice Captain is going to be my new papa."

Was there any possible connection between what Kitty had just
said, and what the poor child had been deluded into believing
when she spoke of her father? Even Susan seemed to be in the
secret of this strange second marriage! She interfered with a
sharp reproof. "You mustn't talk in that way, Miss Kitty. Please
put her off your lap, Miss Westerfield; we have been here too
long already."

Kitty proposed a compromise; "I'll go," she said, "if Syd will
come with me."

"I'm sorry, my darling, to disappoint you."

Kitty refused to believe it. "You couldn't disappoint me if you
tried," she said boldly.

"Indeed, indeed, I must go away. Oh, Kitty, try to bear it as I
do!"

Entreaties were useless; the child refused to hear of another
parting. "I want to make you and mamma friends again. Don't break
my heart, Sydney! Come home with me, and teach me, and play with
me, and love me!"

She pulled desperately at Sydney's dress; she called to Susan to
help her. With tears in her eyes, the girl did her best to help
them both. "Miss Westerfield will wait here," she said to Kitty,
"while you speak to your mamma.--Say Yes!" she whispered to
Sydney; "it's our only chance."

The child instantly exacted a promise. In the earnestness of her
love she even dictated the words. "Say it after me, as I used to
say my lessons," she insisted. "Say, 'Kitty, I promise to wait
for you.'"

Who that loved her could have refused to say it! In one form or
another, the horrid necessity for deceit had followed, and was
still following, that first, worst act of falsehood--the
elopement from Mount Morven.

Kitty was now as eager to go as she had been hitherto resolute to
remain. She called for Susan to follow her, and ran to the hotel.

"My mistress won't let her come back--you can leave the garden
that way." The maid pointed along the path to the left and
hurried after the child.

They were gone--and Sydney was alone again.

At the parting with Kitty, the measure of her endurance was full.
Not even the farewell at Mount Morven had tried her by an ordeal
so cruel as this. No kind woman was willing to receive her and
employ her, now. The one creature left who loved her was the
faithful little friend whom she must never see again. "I am still
innocent to that child," she thought--"and I am parted from her
forever!"

She rose to leave the garden.

A farewell look at the last place in which she had seen Kitty
tempted her to indulge in a moment of delay. Her eyes rested on
the turn in the path at which she had lost sight of the active
little figure hastening away to plead her cause. Even in absence,
the child was Sydney's good angel still. As she turned away to
follow the path that had been shown to her, the relief of tears c
ame at last. It cooled her burning head; it comforted her aching
heart. She tried to walk on. The tears blinded her--she strayed
from the path--she would have fallen but for a hand that caught
her, and held her up. A man's voice, firm and deep and kind,
quieted her first wild feeling of terror. "My child, you are not
fit to be by yourself. Let me take care of you--let me comfort
you, if I can."

He carried her back to the seat that she had left, and waited by
her in merciful silence.

"You are very young to feel such bitter sorrow," he said, when
she was composed again. "I don't ask what your sorrow is; I only
want to know how I can help you."

"Nobody can help me."

"Can I take you back to your friends?"

"I have no friends."

"Pardon me, you have one friend at least--you have me."

"You? A stranger?"

"No human creature who needs my sympathy is a stranger."

She turned toward him for the first time. In her new position,
she was clearly visible in the light. He looked at her
attentively. "I have seen you somewhere," he said, "before now."

She had not noticed him when they had passed each other at
Sandyseal. "I think you must be mistaken," she answered. "May I
thank you for your kindness? and may I hope to be excused if I
say good-night?"

He detained her. "Are you sure that you are well enough to go
away by yourself?" he asked anxiously.

"I am quite sure!"

He still detained her. His memory of that first meeting at the
seaside hotel reminded him that he had seen her in the company of
a man. At their second meeting, she was alone, and in tears. Sad
experience led him to form his own conclusions. "If you won't let
me take care of you," he said, "will you consider if I can be of
any use to you, and will you call at that address?" He gave her
his card. She took it without looking at it; she was confused;
she hardly knew what to say. "Do you doubt me?" he asked--sadly,
not angrily.

"Oh, how can I do that! I doubt myself; I am not worthy of the
interest you feel in me."

"That is a sad thing to say," he answered. "Let me try to give
you confidence in yourself. Do you go to London when you leave
this place?"

"Yes."

"To-morrow," he resumed, "I am going to see another poor girl who
is alone in the world like you. If I tell you where she lives,
will you ask her if I am a person to be trusted?"

He had taken a letter from his pocket, while he was speaking; and
he now tore off a part of the second leaf, and gave it to her. "I
have only lately," he said, "received the address from a friend."

As he offered that explanation, the shrill sound of a child's
voice, raised in anger and entreaty, reached their ears from the
neighborhood of the hotel. Faithful little Kitty had made her
escape, determined to return to Sydney had been overtaken by the
maid--and had been carried back in Susan's arms to the house.
Sydney imagined that she was not perhaps alone in recognizing the
voice. The stranger who had been so kind to her did certainly
start and look round.

The stillness of the night was disturbed no more. The man turned
again to the person who had so strongly interested him. The
person was gone.

In fear of being followed, Sydney hurried to the railway station.
By the light in the carriage she looked for the first time at the
fragment of the letter and the card.

The stranger had presented her with her own address! And, when
she looked at the card, the name was Bennydeck!



Chapter XLVII.


Better Do It Than Wish It Done.


More than once, on one and the same day, the Captain had been
guilty of a weakness which would have taken his oldest friends by
surprise, if they had seen him at the moment. He hesitated.

A man who has commanded ships and has risked his life in the
regions of the frozen deep, is a man formed by nature and taught
by habit to meet emergency face to face, to see his course
straight before him, and to take it, lead him where it may. But
nature and habit, formidable forces as they are, find their
master when they encounter the passion of Love.

At once perplexed and distressed by that startling change in
Catherine which he had observed when her child approached her,
Bennydeck's customary firmness failed him, when the course of
conduct toward his betrothed wife which it might be most becoming
to follow presented itself to him as a problem to be solved. When
Kitty asked him to accompany her nursemaid and herself on their
return to the hotel, he had refused because he felt reluctant to
intrude himself on Catherine's notice, until she was ready to
admit him to her confidence of her own free will. Left alone, he
began to doubt whether delicacy did really require him to make
the sacrifice which he had contemplated not five minutes since.
It was surely possible that Catherine might be waiting to see
him, and might then offer the explanation which would prove to be
equally a relief on both sides. He was on his way to the hotel
when he met with Sydney Westerfield.

To see a woman in the sorest need of all that kindness and
consideration could offer, and to leave her as helpless as he had
found her, would have been an act of brutal indifference
revolting to any man possessed of even ordinary sensibility. The
Captain had only followed his natural impulses, and had only said
and done what, in nearly similar cases, he had said and done on
other occasions.

Left by himself, he advanced a few steps mechanically on the way
by which Sydney had escaped him--and then stopped. Was there any
sufficient reason for his following her, and intruding himself on
her notice? She had recovered, she was in possession of his
address, she had been referred to a person who could answer for
his good intentions; all that it was his duty to do, had been
done already. He turned back again, in the direction of the
hotel.

Hesitating once more, he paused half-way along the corridor which
led to Catherine's sitting-room. Voices reached him from persons
who had entered the house by the front door. He recognized Mrs.
Presty's loud confident tones. She was taking leave of friends,
and was standing with her back toward him. Bennydeck waited,
unobserved, until he saw her enter the sitting-room. No such
explanation as he was in search of could possibly take place in
the presence of Catherine's mother. He returned to the garden.

Mrs. Presty was in high spirits. She had enjoyed the Festival;
she had taken the lead among the friends who accompanied her to
the Palace; she had ordered everything, and paid for nothing, at
that worst of all bad public dinners in England, the dinner which
pretends to be French. In a buoyant frame of mind, ready for more
enjoyment if she could only find it, what did she see on opening
the sitting-room door? To use the expressive language of the
stage, Catherine was "discovered alone"--with her elbows on the
table, and her face hidden in her hands--the picture of despair.

Mrs. Presty surveyed the spectacle before her with righteous
indignation visible in every line of her face. The arrangement
which bound her daughter to give Bennydeck his final reply on
that day had been well known to her when she left the hotel in
the morning. The conclusion at which she arrived, on returning at
night, was expressed with Roman brevity and Roman eloquence in
four words:

"Oh, the poor Captain!"

Catherine suddenly looked up.

"I knew it," Mrs. Presty continued, with her sternest emphasis;
"I see what you have done, in your face. You have refused
Bennydeck."

"God forgive me, I have been wicked enough to accept him!"

Hearing this, some mothers might have made apologies; and other
mothers might have asked what that penitential reply could
possibly mean. Mrs. Presty was no matron of the ordinary type.
She welcomed the good news, without taking the smallest notice of
the expression of self-reproach which had accompanied it.

"My dear child, accept the congratulations of your fond old
mother. I have never been one of the kissing sort (I mean of
course where women are concerned); but this is an occasion which
justifies something quite out of the common way. Come and kiss
me."

Catherine took no notice of that outburst of maternal love.

"I have forgotten everything that I ought to have remembered,"
she said. "In my vanity, in my weakness, in my selfish enjoyment
of the passing moment, I have been too supremely happy even to
think of the trials of my past life, and of the false position
in which they have placed me toward a man, whom I ought to be
ashamed to deceive. I have only been recalled to a sense of duty,
I might almost say to a sense of decency, by my poor little child.
If Kitty had not reminded me of her father--"

Mrs. Presty dropped into a chair: she was really frightened. Her
fat cheeks trembled like a jelly on a dish that is suddenly
moved.

"Has that man been here?" she asked.

"What man?"

"The man who may break off your marriage if he meets with the
Captain. Has Herbert Linley been here?"

"Certainly not. The one person associated with my troubles whom I
have seen to-day is Sydney Westerfield."

Mrs. Presty bounced out of her chair. "You--have seen--Sydney
Westerfield?" she repeated with emphatic pauses which expressed
amazement tempered by unbelief.

"Yes; I have seen her."

"Where?"

"In the garden."

"And spoken to her?"

"Yes."

Mrs. Presty raised her eyes to the ceiling. Whether she expected
our old friend "the recording angel" to take down the questions
and answers that had just passed, or whether she was only waiting
to see the hotel that held her daughter collapse under a sense of
moral responsibility, it is not possible to decide. After an
awful pause, the old lady remembered that she had something more
to say--and said it.

"I make no remark, Catherine; I don't even want to know what you
and Miss Westerfield said to each other. At the same time, as a
matter of convenience to myself, I wish to ascertain whether I
must leave this hotel or not. The same house doesn't hold that
woman and ME. Has she gone?"

"She has gone."

Mrs. Presty looked round the room. "And taken Kitty with her?"
she asked.

"Don't speak of Kitty!" Catherine cried in the greatest distress.
"I have had to keep the poor innocent affectionate child apart
from Miss Westerfield by force. My heart aches when I think of
it."

"I'm not surprised, Catherine. My granddaughter has been brought
up on the modern system. Children are all little angels--no
punishments--only gentle remonstrance--'Don't be naughty, dear,
because you will make poor mamma unhappy.' And then, mamma
grieves over it and wonders over it, when she finds her little
angel disobedient. What a fatal system of education! All my
success in life; every quality that endeared me to your father
and Mr. Presty; every social charm that has made me the idol of
society, I attribute entirely to judicious correction in early
life, applied freely with the open hand. We will change the
subject. Where is dear Bennydeck? I want to congratulate him on
his approaching marriage." She looked hard at her daughter, and
mentally added: "He'll live to regret it!"

Catherine knew nothing of the Captain's movements. "Like you,"
she told her mother, "I have something to say to him, and I don't
know where he is."

Mrs. Presty still kept her eyes fixed on her daughter. Nobody,
observing Catherine's face, and judging also by the tone of her
voice, would have supposed that she was alluding to the man whose
irresistible attractions had won her. She looked ill at ease, and
she spoke sadly.

"You don't seem to be in good spirits, my dear," Mrs. Presty
gently suggested. "No lovers' quarrel already, I hope?"

"Nothing of the kind."

"Can I be of any use to you?"

"You might be of the greatest use. But I know only too well, you
would refuse."

Thus far, Mrs. Presty had been animated by curiosity. She began
now to feel vaguely alarmed. "After all that I have done for
you," she answered, "I don't think you ought to say that. Why
should I refuse?"

Catherine hesitated.

Her mother persisted in pressing her. "Has it anything to do with
Captain Bennydeck?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

Catherine roused her courage.

"You know what it is as well as I do," she said. "Captain
Bennydeck believes that I am free to marry him because I am a
widow. You might help me to tell him the truth."

"What!!!"

That exclamation of horror and astonishment was loud enough to
have been heard in the garden. If Mrs. Presty's hair had been all
her own, it must have been hair that stood on end.

Catherine quietly rose. "We won't discuss it," she said, with
resignation. "I knew you would refuse me." She approached the
door. Her mother got up and resolutely stood in the way. "Before
you commit an act of downright madness," Mrs. Presty said, "I
mean to try if I can stop you. Go back to your chair."

Catherine refused.

"I know how it will end," she answered; "and the sooner it ends
the better. You will find that I am quite as determined as you
are. A man who loves me as _he_ loves me, is a man whom I refuse
to deceive."

"Let's have it out plainly," Mrs. Presty insisted. "He believes
your first marriage has been dissolved by death. Do you mean to
tell him that it has been dissolved by Divorce?"

"I do."

"What right has he to know it?"

"A right that is not to be denied. A wife must have no secrets
from her husband."

Mrs. Presty hit back smartly.

"You're not his wife yet. Wait till you are married."

"Never! Who but a wretch would marry an honest man under false
pretenses?"

"I deny the false pretenses! You talk as if you were an impostor.
Are you, or are you not, the accomplished lady who has charmed
him? Are you, or are you not, the beautiful woman whom he loves?
There isn't a stain on your reputation. In every respect you are
the wife he wants and the wife who is worthy of him. And you are
cruel enough to disturb the poor man about a matter that doesn't
concern him! you are fool enough to raise doubts of you in his
mind, and give him a reproach to cast in your teeth the first
time you do anything that happens to offend him! Any woman--I
don't care who she may be--might envy the home that's waiting for
you and your child, if you're wise enough to hold your tongue.
Upon my word, Catherine, I am ashamed of you. Have you no
principles?"

She really meant it! The purely selfish considerations which she
urged on her daughter were so many undeniable virtues in Mrs.
Presty's estimation. She took the highest moral ground, and stood
up and crowed on it, with a pride in her own principles which the
Primate of all England might have envied.

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