Edmund Yates

“ There are shadows cast from the time that is gone upon our paths, which no light can wholly dissipate, until we emerge into the perfect day; but the shades of anger and resentment are not among them: they have vanished, and can never come again. I do not know where your home is, Robert, and I must direct this letter to your mother's house; but wherever and whatever it may be, I entreat you let me share it. Let me come to you, late as it is, and keep my vow to you, so long and so wilfully broken, 'until death do us part.'
"Katharine Streightley." ”

“ Careless words spoken by a stranger have been a revelation to me. You have sought for me in vain, Robert; then you desire to find me? Is it that you love me still, as you loved me in those evil days when I so ill requited your love? Or is it because you too would expiate the past for God's sake and the right? Whatever be your motive, there is but one course for me--the course I am taking. If you will receive me, I am ready to return to you whenever you shall summon me.
"Do you remember Dr. Hudson, who attended me at Martigny after our marriage? He has been a true and untiring friend to me. ”

“ Poor Katharine! he pitied her. Did he pity himself? Well, not much; it was over--the glamour was gone, and he was none the worse; but she, sold to this man--a poor man now--homeless, self-exiled, with burning anger in her proud heart. He never for a moment thought of the possibility that Katharine might love him, Gordon Frere; still something he did not pause to analyse told him she did not--that the dream was over for her as for him. The waking was very different though. Father and husband lost; home and position forfeited; a wanderer, and poor. Katharine Guyon was all this. ”

“ Yeldham, what is my husband's message to me?"
He rose, came towards her, caught her hands in his, and said hoarsely, while unheeded tears ran down his face:
"His message to you is the message of a dying man to one who holds his life in her gift--of one who loves you with an immortal love; to whom life has been sheer unmitigated agony without you; to whom it has no hope, no ambition, no desire, but your pardon. It is the prayer of the sick for health, of the famishing for food, of the shipwrecked for a sail. ”

“ Half an hour later Charles Yeldham had realised a hope, a dream which had mocked and eluded him for long: he was in Katharine Streightley's presence. Striving hard and ineffectually when before the eyes of the woman towards whom he had felt the strongest emotion which life had ever Drought him for the composure which had seemed so easy at a distance, filled with yearning pity for the man who would have given so much to stand where he was standing, and to see what he was looking upon, Charles Yeldham was quite silent for some minutes. ”

“ Hours had gone over since the glorious light of this new life had dawned--unheeded hours; and now Robert called to Alice, and she came. As he spoke, the old woman looked at him anxiously, but his face reassured her. It was very pale, and he looked old--he had been looking old of late, she had often thought--but peace, serenity, a calm, which she felt without understanding or questioning, were on the features, and a smile--a sweet and serious smile--lighted them. She followed him without a word to the now disused but always orderly, room which had been Mrs. Dutton's in her maiden days. ”

“ I had no doubt, when you came to me, and claimed the fulfilment of the promise I made to you at Martigny--there was such desperation, such utter self-abandonment about you--that I, who knew the symptoms of despair, and their deadliness, could not hesitate about what was to be done. But now, Katharine, now, has not time made any difference?--it has made a great alteration in you, my dear--a very great and blessed change; not time alone, I know, but life and suffering and self-knowledge, and a higher wisdom still--has it not changed circumstances too? ”

“ With its fresh impulse in his voice, he said eagerly:
"And tell me, I entreat you, what effect had this disclosure upon you?"
"Tell me first, Mr. Yeldham, what message do you bring me from my husband? Yet--no," and she stretched her hand towards him to stay his eager answer; "not so, I owe him much: I owe him reparation for pride and passion, for blind resentment, for selfishness and ungovernable self-will, and I will make it. Before I hear my husband's message, let me tell you mine to him." ”

“ Guyon was present to him--the terrible sudden death. Ah, he had taken that too lightly; he had condemned the dead man too hastily and too heavily; the dead man, who had cared for trifles, who had found pleasure in things he could not comprehend, but was no worse than he; the dead man, who loved money and enjoyment, and naught beside. Well, he ought to have pitied him for that--he did pity him, for he was dead. His daughter could not come to him with soft words of peace, and heavenly smiles of pardon, as she was coming to the husband who had wronged her. He did pity the dead old man. ”

“ Soh! you fine English gentleman, who give your word of honour and your sacred and solemn oath, you come to a poor girl like me, and you try to make me tell you about Madame Sidney--who nursed me, and was more good to me than ever any one in the world was before--what the good doctor, her own friend, refuses to tell you. You may go away, sir, back to England; I will tell you nothing--no, not one single word. If this lady's husband is alive, he has done something that makes her think of him as dead, and she knows best. He has made her miserable ”

“ They have always been your friends, have they not? I thought you had known them intimately for years, and always received kindness from them--I am sure you have told me so--and now you speak of their trouble in this sneering way. When you told me of poor old Guyon's death, I was shocked at your want of feeling; and now, God forgive me, but I am not able to resist the suspicion there is something horribly like gladness in your heart. How can this be? What is it all? What has Robert Streightley, what has Katharine done, that you should regard their misery as you do? ”

“ Gordon Frere was not a man who could understand the petty pride and that kind of egotism which make a man married to a rich woman perpetually uneasy because she is rich, and perpetually desirous of reminding her and the world that he is the legal proprietor of herself and her money. Hester Frere was not the sort of person to understand that, having given him herself, a woman could estimate her money more highly in the transaction, and aim at keeping her husband mindful of the secondary and comparatively insignificant concession. ”

“ If there be, as there must be, a serious misunderstanding between her and Streightley, I pity him with all my heart. I know little of him; but as I have come to know that little, I have learned to respect and esteem him. I will help him to the utmost of my power."
"Will you?" said Hester, with a sneer. "Your will and your power are both likely to be taxed. Mrs. Streightley timed her departure well; she had got all there was to be had out of her great marriage. Robert Streightley is a ruined man!" ”

“ Do you think I have not felt the passage of every hour of it?"
"I know you have," said Yeldham; "but I want you to think of it in another sense--its own sense. It effaces every thing--kingdoms and flies, men's strength and women's beauty, the deepest loves, the bitterest hatreds, the cruellest injuries, the firmest resolves. Believe me, Katharine has outlived her anger, and has been held to her purpose by pride and circumstances. ”

“ While Robert Streightley lay ill in his bed, it was not to be expected that Charley Yeldham could remain quiet, poring over his law-papers, without running in now and then to see how his friend was getting on; whether he wanted any thing; whether the perpetual scratching of the pen disturbed him; whether the preternatural silence did not drive him mad; and other queries, such as men in rude health propose to those whom, being ill, they take to be fanciful. ”

“ Yes, sir, that lady is my principal. Her husband don't know or care much about business, I daresay, and so much the better--a good fellow, I daresay; but soft, sir--soft."
"And so Mrs. Frere is your principal, Mr. Thacker," said Yeldham, after a moment's pause, to recover his equanimity, "and was her friend's principal creditor, eh? Well, well, that's strange enough. And you and she don't put your horses together now? What can have made you agree to differ?"
"You've a very insinuating manner, Mr. Yeldham. It's a pity you're not in the courts instead of in chamber practice. ”

“ Think of your youth, Katharine. Your life is almost all before you; and you have no friend but me. Supposing I were to die, my dear, how would it be with you then? For though you are not so helpless and so ignorant of the world's ways as when you came to me that winter's night, and told me I must hide you, and that without a question, and I did it--you are as little fitted as any woman I know for the loneliness of a friendless life. ”

“ So he calls Katharine, and she comes quickly; and they go up the stairs together, Alice following. There is light on each landing, and they are soon at the door. Yeldham taps rapidly, and at the same time turns the door-handle; and Katharine, with a swift steady step, passes into the room, into the glow of the light and the warmth and the perfume of the flowers. She sees it all with one quick happy glance; sees the jewels on the table, and recognises them; sees the light glancing upon the scales of the diamond serpent ”

“ You know that, pending the great gathering together of all of us at Jerusalem, our people are spread over the whole face of the earth. Thus those among us who are well known, or who take a leading part, have ramifications and correspondents in every large city in the world. I myself am in this position; and it was my intention to have set the whole of the machinery in motion, with the view of discovering where Mrs. Streightley lay hidden, when, by a most fortunate accident, I believe I have been spared the trouble, and have at once accomplished my end."
"God grant it!" said Yeldham earnestly. ”

“ She will know sooner or later that misfortunes have come on him, and she will return. Then Gordon will see her again, when the little love he ever gave me is dead; when he has become her husband's friend; when there is no confidence between him and me--and she has been the means of its withdrawal. Yes, it was she, not myself, not my betrayal of my feelings--how could I help that? how could any wretched creature like me avoid that?--it was she! he is always thinking of her. What is his friendship for Robert but love of her? I know he works for him; he goes to him whenever he goes to town ”

“ The event was terrible in itself, and had terrible meaning to Lady Henmarsh and to Katharine Streightley. Gordon thought honestly of the latter as his wife's friend, not as the woman he had loved; and he winced at the little touch of unwomanliness which Hester betrayed. He understood her very incompletely; and though he knew she loved him, he did not know that she loved no one in the world but himself--and herself. The good-natured fellow did not get over the novel sense of annoyance with his wife easily ”

“ Alice is startled at her beauty. She looks like a queen, she thinks; her deep-mourning dress drapes her like robes. But she has only time for a glimpse of Katharine, for Yeldham leads her quickly into the dining-room, whence he comes out in a moment, and asks Alice, still in the hall, and watching the servants and the cabman carrying the luggage up the little garden walk, "Where's Robert?"
Alice explains that he is in the room prepared for Mrs. Streightley, but wonders he has not heard the cab, and is bustling towards the stairs to call him, when Yeldham stops her. ”

“ No, Robert, I would not do that. You're not well, my good fellow; you're not strong; any excitement of this kind might knock you up, and that would never do, you know."
"I know that I shall start by the tidal train to-morrow morning, Charley. Now don't argue with me, for my mind is made up."
But Robert Streightley did not start to Paris by the next morning's tidal train. As he sat that night talking over his intended journey with his friend, Yeldham saw the colour fade out of his face, the light out of his eyes,--finally saw him go off in a dead swoon. ”

“ Quiet and persistent self-will, which never failed in its object, but rarely hurt other people in attaining it, was a strong characteristic of Hester; but the stronger had come in--Love, the conqueror, the invincible--and self-will had promptly surrendered. There was a good deal of unconscious selfishness in Gordon Frere's nature--the light, airy, pleasant selfishness which is frequently combined with a large capacity for enjoyment and constitutional indolence, but which in his case would have been easily dispelled on any given occasion by a remonstrance, and never made itself offensive. ”