A Knight of the Nineteenth Century Part 56

"Auntie," she said, showing it to Mrs. Arnot, "I cannot marry that man.

I would rather die first."

"I do not wonder that you feel so," replied Mrs. Arnot emphatically.

"With all his wealth and culture I neither would nor could marry him, and would tell him so. I have felt sure that you would come to this conclusion, but I wished your own heart and conscience to decide the matter."

But before Laura could say to Mr. Beaumont that which she felt she must, and yet which she dreaded, for his sake, to speak, a social earthquake took place in Hillaton.

Mr. Arnot was arrested! But for the promptness of his friends to give bail for his appearance, he would have been taken from his private office to prison as poor Haldane had been years before.

It would be wearisome to tell the long story of his financial distress, which he characteristically kept concealed from his wife. Experiences like his are only too common. With his pa.s.sion for business he had extended it to the utmost limit of his capital. Then came a time of great depression and contraction. Prompted by a will that had never been thwarted, and a pa.s.sion for routine which could endure no change, he made Herculean effort to keep everything moving on with mechanical regularity. His strong business foresight detected the coming change for the better in the business world, and with him it was only a question of bridging over the intervening gulf. He sank his own property in his effort to do this; then the property of his wife and Laura, which he held in trust. Then came the great temptation of his life. He was joint trustee of another very large property, and the co-executor was in Europe, and would be absent for years. In order to use some of the funds of this property it was necessary to have the signature of this gentleman. With the infatuation of those who dally with this kind of temptation, Mr. Arnot felt sure that he could soon make good all that he should use in his present emergency, and, therefore, forged the name of the co-trustee. The gentleman returned from Europe unexpectedly, and the crime was discovered and speedily proved.

It was now that Mrs. Arnot proved what a n.o.ble and womanly nature she possessed. Without palliating his fault, she ignored the whole scoffing, chattering world, and stood by her husband with as wifely devotion as if his crime had been misfortune, and he himself had been the affectionate considerate friend that she had believed he would be, when as a blushing maiden she had accepted the hand that had grown so hard, and cold, and heavy.

Mr. Beaumont was stunned and bewildered. At first he scarcely knew what to do, although his sagacious father and mother told him very plainly to break the engagement at once. But the trouble with Mr. Beaumont upon this occasion was that he was a man of honor, and for once he almost regretted the fact. But since he was, he believed that there was but one course open for him. Although Laura was now penniless, and the same almost as the daughter of a man who would soon be in State prison, he had promised to marry her. She must become the mistress of the ancient and aristocratic Beaumont mansion.

He braced himself, as had been his custom when a battle was in prospect, and went down to the beautiful villa which would be Laura's home but a few days longer.

As he entered, she saw that he was about to perform the one heroic act of his life, but she was cruel enough to prevent even that one, and so reduced his whole career to one consistently elegant and polished surface.

He had taken her hand, and was about to address her in the most appropriate language, and with all the dignity of self-sacrifice, when she interrupted him by saying briefly:

"Mr. Beaumont, please listen to me first. Before the most unexpected event occurred which has made so great a change in my fortunes, and I may add, in so many of my friends, I had decided to say to you in all sincerity and, kindness that I could not marry you. I could not give you that love which a wife ought to give to a husband. I now repeat my decision still more emphatically."

Mr. Beaumont was again stunned and bewildered. A woman declining to marry him!

"Can nothing change your decision?" he faltered, fearing that something might.

"Nothing," she coldly replied, and with an involuntary expression of contempt hovering around her flexible mouth.

"But what will you do?" he asked, prompted by not a little curiosity.

"Support myself by honest work," was her quiet but very decisive answer.

Mr. Beaumont now felt that there was nothing more to be done but to make a little elegant farewell address, and depart, and he would make it in spite of all that she could do.

The next thing she heard of him was that he had started on a tour of Europe, and, no doubt, in his old character of a connoisseur, whose judgment few dared to dispute.

CHAPTER LIV

ANOTHER KNIGHT APPEARS

The processes of law were at length complete, and Mr. Arnot found himself in a prison cell, with the prospect that years must elapse before he would receive a freedom that now was dreaded almost more than his forced seclusion. After his conviction he had been taken from Hillaton to a large prison of the State, in a distant city.

"I shall follow you, Thomas, as soon as I can complete such arrangements as are essential," Mrs. Arnot had said, "and will remain as near to you as I can. Indeed, it will be easier for Laura and me to commence our new life there than here."

The man had at last begun to realize the whole truth. True to his nature, he thought of himself first, and saw that his crime, like a great black hand, had dragged him down from his proud eminence of power and universal respect, away from his beloved business, and had shut him up in this narrow, stony sepulchre, for what better was his prison cell than a tomb to a man with his tireless mind? The same mind which like a giant had carried its huge burden every day, was still his; but now there was nothing for it to do. And yet it would act, for constant mental action had become a necessity from a lifetime of habit.

Heretofore his vast business taxed every faculty to the utmost. He had to keep his eye on all the great markets of the world; he had to follow politicians, diplomats, and monarchs into their secret councils, and guess at their policy in order to shape his own business policy. His interests were so large and far-reaching that it had been necessary for him to take a glance over the world before he could properly direct his affairs from his private office. For years he had been commanding a small army of men, and with consummate skill and constant thought he had arrayed the industry of his army against the labors of like armies under the leadership of other men in compet.i.tion with himself. His mind had learned to flash with increasing speed and accuracy to one and another of all these varied interests. But now the great fabric of business and wealth, which he had built by a lifetime of labor, had vanished like a dream, and nothing remained but the mind that had constructed it.

"Ah!" he groaned again and again, "why could not mind and memory perish also?"

But they remained, and were the only possessions left of his great wealth.

Then he began to think of his wife and Laura. He had beggared them, and, what was far worse, he had darkened their lives with the shadow of his own disgrace. Wholly innocent as they were, they must suffer untold wretchedness through his act. In his view he was the cause of the broken engagement between his niece and the wealthy Mr. Beaumont, and now he saw that there was nothing before the girl but a dreary effort to gain a livelihood by her own labor, and this effort rendered almost hopeless by the reflected shame of his crime.

His wife also was growing old and feeble. At last he realized he had a wife such as is given to but few men--a woman who was great enough to be tender and sympathetic through all the awful weeks that had elapsed since the discovery of his crime--a woman who could face what she saw before her and utter no words of repining or reproach.

He now saw how cold and hard and unappreciative he had been toward her in the days of his prosperity, and he cursed himself and his unutterable folly.

Thus his great powerful mind turned in vindictive rage against itself.

Memory began to show him with mocking finger and bitter jibes where he might have acted more wisely in his business, more wisely in his social relations, and especially more wisely and humanely, to say the least, in his own home. It seemed to take a fiendish delight in telling him how everything might have been different, and how he, instead of brooding in a prison cell, might have been the most honored, useful, wealthy, and happy man in Hillaton.

Thus he was tortured until physical exhaustion brought him a brief respite of sleep. But the next day it was the same wretched round of bitter memories and vain but torturing activity of mind. Day after day pa.s.sed and he grew haggard under his increasing mental distress. His mind was like a great driving wheel, upon which all the tremendous motive power is turned without cessation, but for which there is nothing to drive save the man himself, and seemingly it would drive him mad.

At last he said to himself, "I cannot endure this. For my own sake, for the sake of my wife and Laura, it were better that an utter blank should take the place of Thomas Arnot. I am, and ever shall be, only a burden to them. I am coming to be an intolerable burden to myself."

The thought of suicide, once entertained, grew rapidly in favor, and at last it became only a question how he could carry out his dark purpose.

With this definite plan before him he grew calmer. At last he had something to do in the future, and terrible memory must suspend for a time its scorpion lash while he thought how best to carry out his plan.

The suicide about to take the risk of endless suffering is usually desirous that the intervening moments of his "taking off" should be as painless as possible, and Mr. Arnot began to think how he could make his exit momentary. But his more tranquil mood, the result of having some definite action before him, led to sleep, and the long night pa.s.sed in unconsciousness, the weary body clogging the wheels of conscious thought.

The sun was shining when he awoke; but with returning consciousness came memory and pain, and the old cowardly desire to escape all the consequences of his sin by death. He vowed he would not live to see another day, and once more he commenced brooding over the one question, how he would die. As he took up this question where he had dropped it the previous night, the thought occurred to him what a long respite he had had from pain. Then like a flash of lightning came another thought:

"Suppose by my self-destroying act I pa.s.s into a condition of life in which there is no sleep, and memory can torture without cessation, without respite? True, I have tried to believe there is no future life, but am I sure of it? Here I can obtain a little rest. For hours I have been unconscious, through the weight of the body upon my spirit. How can I be sure that the spirit cannot exist separately and suffer just the same? I am not suffering now through my body, and have not been through all these terrible days. My body is here in this cell, inert and motionless, painless, while in my mind I am enduring the torments of the d.a.m.ned. The respite from suffering that I have had has come through the weariness of my body, and here I am planning to cast down the one barrier that perhaps saves me from an eternity of torturing thought and memory."

He was appalled at the bare possibility of such a future; reason told him that such a future was probable, and conscience told him that it was before him in veritable truth. He felt that wherever he carried memory and his present character he would be most miserable, whether it were in Dante's Inferno, Milton's Paradise, or the heaven or h.e.l.l of the Bible.

There was no more thought of suicide. Indeed, he shrank from death with inexpressible dread.

Slowly his thoughts turned to his wife, the woman who had been so true to him, the one human being of all the world who now stood by him. She might help him in his desperate strait. She seemed to have a principle within her soul which sustained her, and which might sustain him. At any rate, he longed to see her once more, and ask her forgiveness in deep contrition for his base and lifelong failure to "love, honor, and cherish her," as he had promised at G.o.d's altar and before many witnesses.

The devoted wife came and patiently entered on her ministry of love and Christian faith, and out of the chaos of the fallen man of iron and stone there gradually emerged a new man, who first became in Christ's expressive words "a little child" in spiritual things, that he might grow naturally and in the symmetry of the enduring manhood which G.o.d designs to perfect in the coming ages.

Mrs. Arnot's st.u.r.dy integrity led her to give up everything to her husband's creditors, and she came to the city of her new abode wherein the prison was located almost penniless. But she brought letters from Dr. Barstow, Mr. Ivison, and other Christian people of Hillaton. These were presented at a church of the denomination to which she belonged, and all she asked was some employment by which she and Laura could support themselves. These letters secured confidence at once. There was no mystery--nothing concealed--and, although so shadowed by the disgrace of another, the bearing of the ladies inspired respect and won sympathy.

A gentleman connected with the church gave Laura the position of saleswoman in his bookstore, and to Mrs. Arnot's little suburban cottage of only three rooms kind and interested ladies brought sewing and fancy-work. Thus they were provided for, as G.o.d's people ever are in some way.

Mrs. Arnot had written a long letter to Haldane before leaving Hillaton, giving a full account of their troubles, with one exception. At Laura's request she had not mentioned the broken engagement with Beaumont.

"If possible, I wish to see him myself before he knows," she had said.

"At least, before any correspondence takes place between us, I wish to look into his eyes, and if I see the faintest trace of shrinking from me there, as I saw it in Mr. Beaumont's eyes, I will never marry him, truly as I love him."

Mrs. Arnot's face had lighted up with its old-time expression, as she said:

"Laura, don't you know Egbert Haldane better than that?"

"I can't help it," she had replied with a troubled brow; "the manner of nearly every one has changed so greatly that I must see him first."