Only a clod
Mr. Gordon kept everything hidden from his family as long as he could;
and Constance told me that it seemed as if a great cloud was hanging
over the house, and there was something in the atmosphere that stifled
them all. But when the crash came at last, they bore it bravely; and see
how well they have got on ever since, in a moderate way. Ah, papa, you
have brought me up like a spoiled child, or a princess in a fairy tale;
and now that trouble has come to us, you think I can’t bear it. But I
_can_, papa; if you will only be brave, your foolish, extravagant
daughter will learn to be wise and patient. I was getting very tired of
Twickenham, papa; and shall be as happy as the day is long in a nice
little cottage in some cheap suburb, where I can have pupils.”
Lionel Hillary ought no doubt to have been comforted by his daughter’s
tenderness; but unhappily there are some wounds so cruelly inflamed,
that the gentlest application the surgeon can devise is apt to chafe and
irritate them. The girl’s talk jarred upon the merchant’s mind, and it
was with a shiver of pain that he turned to her as she left off
speaking.
“Child, child!” he exclaimed, fretfully, “you don’t know what you’re
talking of. Do you think it is such an easy thing to pass from one of
the first positions in the City to a clerkship and a cottage in the
suburbs? Do you think there is nothing _between_ such opposite
conditions? Do you suppose I have only to shut up my books, and wish my
creditors good morning, before I walk out of my office! You talk and
think like a child, Maude. It is all very well for an old twaddler like
John Gordon, who suspends payment upon the first failure that affects
his stability, and who winds up his affairs with a dividend of fifteen
shillings in the pound, and the compliments and sympathy of all
Basinghall Street. No one will sympathize with _my_ fall, though more
than I can count will suffer with me. I am not a man to drop under the
first blow, Maude; for nearly three years I have been working a rotten
ship, with the knowledge that nothing short of a miracle could save me
from wreck. The wreck has come. The world will call me a dishonest man,
because I waited for that miracle. I waited as the gambler waits at the
green table, hoping that the last risk would bring me salvation. With me
ruin means disgrace. I tell you, Maude, before the month is out, there
will be a panic in the City, and men will cry out that Lionel Hillary is
a rogue and a swindler. There’s not a man who ever dined at Twickenham
that won’t use his knowledge of my home as a weapon against me. There’s
not a bottle of wine I ever gave a friend whose price and quality will
not be made a reproach against me. Oh! I know how people talk about
these things. Go away, child! Your presence only goads and irritates me.
It reminds me that I might have done better than I have done; I might
have been wiser, I might have saved something--my good name at least. I
have loved you so dearly, Maude,--Heaven only knows how dearly, for I am
no man of big words or sentimental phrases. And now I leave you utterly
destitute, the pauper child of a disgraced father.”
“But you shall not leave me,” cried Maude, with a sudden energy that
startled Lionel Hillary. “Papa, why do you insist upon treating me as a
child? Why do you judge me by what I have been, rather than by what I
can be? Why won’t you trust me? why won’t you talk to me as if I were a
son, and had a right to share your secrets? You have told me the worst,
and you see I can bear to know it. I can endure even disgrace; but I
cannot bear to lose you. Trust me, papa. I will be patient under any
calamity except----” She was seized with a sudden shivering, and clung
to him with a convulsive force in the small hands that entwined
themselves about his arm. “You know what I mean, papa,” she said.
“Believe that I can bear anything if you will be true and brave and
patient. And even yet the miracle may come. Something may happen at the
very last, surely it may, to save your good name.”
Mr. Hillary pressed his daughter’s hand in acknowledgment of so much
tenderness and devotion; but he shook his head moodily as he answered
her, “Nothing _can_ happen to save me, unless twenty thousand pounds
drop from the skies between this and the 10th of January.”
Twenty thousand pounds! Maude’s thoughts flew to her jewel-case, in
obedience to the most universal of feminine instincts. Twenty thousand
pounds! Alas for that birthday gift of opals and diamonds, the turquoise
rings and bracelets, the emerald cross, the delicate pink coral, and all
the fragile fantastic toys of gold and enamel, bought in the dearest
market of elegant West-end dealers, who give three years’ credit. Maude,
in all her ignorance, was wise enough to know that these things would
not realize one of the twenty thousands required by her father.
“But there is Twickenham, papa,” she said; “the Cedars must be worth
ever so many thousands.”
“And is mortgaged to the full extent of its value,” answered Mr.
Hillary. “Find me twenty thousand pounds, if you can, Maude; but don’t
worry me with frivolous suggestions. I tell you that it is quite
impossible for a woman to understand my position. God help me! I
scarcely understand it myself. I only know that everything round me is
so much rottenness, and that the crash _must_ come next month.”
“But you will not think--of that--again!” urged Maude, pointing to the
drawer.
“No; I’ll wait to the tenth.”
“For _my_ sake; Oh, papa, for my sake!”
“No, child; not for your sake, but from a selfish, cowardly clinging to
life,” cried Lionel Hillary, with sudden passion. “It would be better
for you, ten times better, if I were dead. The thought of that was in my
mind as I came down here to-night, until the noise of the engine almost
seemed to thump out the words, ‘Better for her, better for her.’ People
would have mercy upon you if I were dead, Maude; even those who suffered
by me would be less bitter in their reproaches if I were dead. A man can
only break his heart once; and when the man is dead, there is no mark
for the arrows of justifiable reproach, or the foul garden-stuff and
rotten eggs of malicious calumny.”
“Papa, the help may come; the twenty thousand pounds may be found.”
“No, child; there was only one hope of that, and the hope is gone.”
For the first time that night Mr. Hillary looked at his daughter; she
saw the look, an anxious scrutiny that sent a chill through her heart.
She did not ask him what that one hope had been.
“Papa, trust in me, only trust in me!” she cried; “you do not know of
what I am capable for your sake--for your sake. You don’t know what I
have suffered to-night, and how changed I am by that suffering. Hope for
a miracle even, papa: keep things as smooth as you can, and between this
and the tenth the twenty thousand pounds may be found. Only tell me one
thing. You don’t want anyone to _give_ you the money. If it were lent to
you, you could repay it by-and-by?”
“Yes; with sufficient time I could repay it.”
“Then hope for the miracle, papa. Ah! you think me such a child that you
are almost angry with me for telling you to hope; but the lion laughed
at the mouse, I dare say.”
Five minutes after this, Miss Hillary led her father to his room, and
wished him good night, cheerfully enough, upon the threshold. But under
that pretence of cheerfulness, cruel fears and perplexities were
torturing her innocent heart. Ruin, dishonour, disgrace; the misery of
many homes besides that one household on the bank of the river,--all
these terrors had come very suddenly upon the girl who only that morning
had been impatient of the December weather and the dull gray sky.
She went to her room; but only to sit with the door open, listening for
any sound in her father’s apartment, which was next her own. She sat for
nearly two hours shivering with cold, and then crept softly to her
father’s room and opened the door. The merchant was sleeping, peacefully
enough to all appearance, for his breathing was tranquil and regular; so
Maude went back to her room. It seemed the bitterest mockery to go to
bed; but then Miss Hillary’s maid would have been scandalized had she
come at eight o’clock and found her mistress still watching. Alas, poor
Maude; for the first time in her life she had to submit to that most
cruel social penance, entitled “keeping up appearances.” She went to
bed; and though she seemed to hear every hour, and half-hour, and
quarter of an hour chimed by the church clocks, she must have slept at
some time or other in that brief remainder of the night, or else how
should she have been tormented by those hideous dreams, in which she was
always wading through black morasses and turgid waters, carrying in her
arms a great bag of gold, which she vainly strove to convey to her
father?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVI.
A DRAMA THAT WAS ACTED BEHIND THE SCENES.
Mr. Hillary escorted his daughter and Julia Desmond back to Twickenham
upon the day following that night-scene of anguish and terror. They left
Brighton rather late in the day, and arrived at the Cedars when the
early winter evening had closed in upon the leafless avenues and groves
about the old house. Lights were burning cheerily in the long range of
lower windows, and in the vestibule and inner hall; and rare groups of
stainless marble gleamed white against a background of bright hothouse
flowers. Deferential servants came hurrying out as the carriage drove
up; and Miss Hillary, seeing her home in all its accustomed brightness
and comfort, felt a painful sense of bewilderment. It was so difficult
to realize the force of that calamity which had been so lately revealed
to her: it was so difficult to believe that all this splendour was so
much rottenness, from which there was only one step to poverty and
disgrace.
Mr. Hillary had visited his daughter’s room very early upon the morning
after the terrible confidence between them, and had impressed upon her
the necessity of suppressing every evidence of the knowledge that had
come to her.
“I have been compelled to trust you, Maude,” he said; “and you must
prove yourself worthy of my confidence. Heaven only knows how difficult
it has been for me to keep the secrets of my business during three years
of reverses and misfortunes such as rarely fall to the lot of a
speculator. My only chance of floating over this crisis lies in the
meeting with some friend who will lend me the money I want, without
looking too closely into the nature of the security I have to offer. But
let the state of my affairs once get wind, and all hope of retrieval
would be lost. Remember this, Maude: and, if you love me, show a bright
face to the world; and above all, beware of Julia Desmond. That young
lady is a dangerous person, my dear; and the day may come when we shall
have reason to regret having given a shelter to old Desmond’s destitute
child.”
“But Julia is a dear good girl, papa; she would be very sorry for us, I
am sure,” Maude pleaded, innocently.
“Julia has contrived to feather her own nest so remarkably well, that
she would be very indifferent to any calamity that could come to her
friends,” answered the practical man of the world, who had been by no
means pleased with Miss Desmond since that young lady’s conquest of
Francis Tredethlyn.
Maude kissed her father,--ah, how passionately! She clung to him, as she
remembered that long feverish dream of the previous night, and the
glittering something lying in the drawer; she kissed him, and promised
that his secrets should be guarded more carefully than her own life.
“And the miracle _may_ be accomplished between this and the tenth of