Mary Elizabeth Braddon

“ Catherine Paroldi came to the old house near the Tower, A tall, slim, slip of a girl, with a very dark complexion, browned by West Indian suns, not lovely to look upon, by any means, Philip thought at first, but with eyes of wondrous power and beauty, as he came to understand before long and with a tender half-pleading half-bewitching manner not long to be resisted by the heart of man. ”

“ If he had no one else to wish him joy upon his birthday, he could at least congratulate himself upon his wealth, and wonder how these people endured the burden of their existence—he who, an hour ago, had rushed out of his comfortable home, unable to bear the sudden agony of its solitude, the thought of all the monotonous, joyless years that he was to live in it. ”

“ The world in which he lived spoke well of Philip Rayner. He was a clever prosperous young man, with a character unsullied by vice, an agreeable personal appearance and a manner that was very quiet but not wanting in pleasantness. A thoughtful young man, too, who was apt to contemplate all things in their gravest aspect. For the rest he was very happily placed in the world, being the only son of a wealthy leather-merchant who had carried on a prosperous trade for the last forty years in some gloomy old premises in the river-district beyond the Tower. ”

“ The contemplation of his own prosperity was a pleasant thing enough, but her sad face came between him and that image of the golden calf which he had set up for himself. Was he sorry for her? No, surely not. He was not made of the staff to forgive such a wrong as he had suffered. He was a good hater.
Another year had gone, and Philip Rayner was forty years of age. It was his birthday—a dull, sunless day late in October, with a cruel easterly wind blowing all day long. Rather a dreary occasion, a birthday, for a man who stands quite alone in the world. ”

“ George Tolson has asked me to be his wife, and—and I love him very dearly-and we are to be married in a month or two. We shall not be rich, of course for George has his mother to keep—that is his first duty—but we can live happily on a very little, we love each other so truly."
The ghastly change in her cousin's face stopped her suddenly in the middle of her innocent confession.
"Cousin, dear Cousin Philip" aha exclaimed, "you are not angry?"
"Angry?" cried the young man; "you have broken my heart. What! didn't you know that I loved you? ”

“ It would have seemed a hard thing for one so tender and gentle to he turned adrift upon a cold, cruel world. And what could they do without her in that dreary old house having once known the magical, brightening influence of her presence? She had a hundred little arts by which a woman can embellish the dullest home, and little by little as she found herself privileged to do these things, exercised her pretty trivial arts. ”

“ It mattered very little, Philip thought. All that he had would be Catherine's. It was time for him now to speak plainly; the dear girl must not have an hour's doubt as to the security of her position. He would speak to her that very evening. There was no indecency, no lack of reverence for the dead, in such promptitude. Philip fancied that his marriage with Catherine would have been the desire of his father's heart. The old man must have surely foreseen their union, or he would never have left Catherine Marsh's daughter penniless. ”

“ He felt this deficiency of his rather keenly when George Tolson was with them, for George had a fine baritone voice and considerable taste for music, and would sing a duet with Catherine very often. It seemed to bring those two closer together, and for the first time Philip felt a pang of jealousy. He was angry with himself for the feeling, and made a great effort to overcome it, asking his friend to the old house all the oftener because of this secret weakness.
"What fear need I have of him if she loves me?" he argued with himself; "and if not, what can it matter whom she sees? ”

“ The ancient butter opened the door and received his new master with a solemn face—a face in which there was real grief, for the man had loved his employer of so many years.
"There never was a better master or a better man," he said, with something like a sob. "Yes, Mr. Philip, we've lost him. He fell down in a fit just after breakfast, though he'd read his newspaper and everything just the same as usual, and he never spoke again, poor dear gentleman! ”

“ The dark look with which Philip Rayner answered the question put an effectual stop to all further inquiries on that head.
So his life went on, buying and selling, and daily growing richer; coming home every day to the same lonely room; eating and drinking sparingly in solitude; sitting alone through the long evening with a neglected book lying on the table before him, or wandering alone in the familiar streets and in the suburban roads that he had trodden long ago with George Tolson ”

“ He had always been a good man of business, but from the hour of his disappointment he devoted himself to the dray-as-dust labors of his daily life with a new energy. His father had left him a rich man, and every year added to his wealth, while his expenses diminished instead of increasing. The faithful butler retired to live upon his savings and his dead master's legacy in a congenial retreat beyond Wapping, and Philip mad no attempt to supply his place. ”

“ There was the will to be read—a ceremony which did not involve much anxiety or heartburning; for Samuel Rayner had not many relatives, and those he left behind him were, with the exception of Catherine Paroldi, wealthy traders settled in remote colonies. There wax no one but Philip and the two old servants, Mrs. Dorkin the housekeeper and Jackson the butler to hear the reading of the will, which was read with all due solemnity by the family solicitor in the grim, darksome dining-room, a spacious chamber only used on state occasions. ”

“ An unkempt servant-maid, a mere girl of fifteen or so, emerged from the back premises as they went into the little passage, carrying a tallow candle, by the light of which Philip Rayner took his first survey of the parlor. It seemed as if the child divined the meaning of that look.
"It's not our furniture," she said—"that was taken away for the rent more than a month ago. Some kind neighbors lent us these things, and the landlord let us stay till the house is let: when it is, we must go."
"What a time you've been, Miss Mary!" ”

“ It was a dismal home for youth, certainly, that great gaunt red-brick mansion, with its wide, ghastly oaken staircase, where in the twilight it would seem more natural to meet some phantasmal lady in a brocaded sacque, or some withered gentleman in powder and velvet, with silk stockings rolled over his knees, than to encounter any modem flesh-and-blood creature. ”

“ The days seemed longer to him than of old, and he wondered at his eagerness to go home to the quiet dinner and long quiet evening, when Catherine sat at a little table near the old man, busy with some complicated piece of embroidery, for which, with all other delicate kinds of fancy-work, she had an especial genius.
There would be no difficulty about her getting her own living by and by, Samuel Rayner said, seeing how industrious the girl wan. Philip thought that she might never have any occasion to earn a living for herself. ”

“ A couple of thousand pounds! and that poor pinched face of hers had looked as if a ten-pound note would have been a boon to her.
"I never thought that George Tolson would succeed in life," Philip Rayner said to himself that night; "he was too volatile. Clever, I admit, but with that sort of superficial cleverness which seldom helps a man to make a fortune."
From that time forward the face that had flashed past him in the crowded street was always with him. She had haunted him before in her girlish grace and beauty ”

“ He was to go by the night mail, and it was a calm, airless evening early in May when he left his familiar house. Catherine came to the hall door to bid him good-bye. For the first time in his life he kissed her. Just at the last, when his portmanteau had been put on the roof of the cab and the old butler was standing on the doorstep talking to the driver, Philip took his cousin in his arms and kissed her on the lips. ”

“ Philip said to himself, "for the scoundrel is clever. He had a hundred and fifty a year with us; he will scarcely get so much elsewhere. At best it can only be genteel beggary—a perpetual struggle for bare existence. ”

“ It always ends so."
"It would never end so with me," muttered the young man, clenching his fist vindictively. "Nothing upon this earth could induce me to forgive a woman who had jilted me. But how about the letter, father, and what has that to do with this old story?"
"It is from her, Philip, from Catherine Marsh—Catherine Paroldi—the last letter she ever wrote. She is dead. Another hand tells me that at the end of the letter—her daughter's. She is dead, and has left one child, a girl, the last of a large family, all dead but this one. ”

“ Johnson, "I like a good hater." Philip Rayner used to boast that that in this respect he was a man to the great lexicographer's heart "I never forgive an enemy," he said, "and I never forget a kindness." True, there are certain gracious sentences recorded in the teaching of our Saviour and treasured in the writings of St. Paul which do not quite harmonize with Samuel Johnson's dictum—sentences which inculcate an inexhaustible capacity for the pardon of wrongs, precepts which show us how poor a thing it is only to love those who love us. ”

“ The father was growing quite an old man now, was subject to severe attacks of gout, which kept him a prisoner to his arm-chair much to his aggravation, and Philip was almost sole manager of the business. He consulted his father day by day, it in true, but the consultation was a kind of formula for Samuel Rayner's brain was beginning to lose its business faculty.
In all these years since he had left school upon his seventeenth birthday to enter into the proud possession of a stool in his father's counting-house Philip Rayner had made only one friend. ”

“ How friendless the poor must needs be, when such a trifling service seemed so much to them!
The girl was eleven years old, the eldest of the family. There were three other little ones at home, two girls and a boy. Papa's name was Turner. He had been very unfortunate, could not get a situation in the city, and was earning a very little now by writing for some obscure newspaper. He was very clever, the child said, hut not so good as mamma; And poor mamma had felt all the trouble so much, and it had made her very ill. ”

“ There's no margin for a man to pay back debts in that."
No, Philip Rayner was fain to confess that there is not much margin for anything in a pound a week, after food and raiment for a family have been provided out of it. What was he to do for thee people? It was all very well to indulge his sympathetic feeling for the little girl, but he did not want to do anything quixotic, or to burden himself with the maintenance of an unknown pauper household for the rest of his days. ”

“ Dorkin told me as much a day or so ago, and the evening after Cousin Samuel's death I had the offer of a new home. Don't think me ungrateful, pray, Cousin Philip, or that I want to run away from you. Indeed, I cannot fancy a sister loving her brother better than I love you, but I must go away, every one says that."
She looked at him just a little anxiously, the blush fading slowly away from the sweet face.
"A new home! Why should you go away, Catherine? What need you care if some malicious fool should slander us? It is hardly possible for malice to go as far as that ”

“ What shall we do with Catherine Paroldi? She has been christened after her mother—Catherine."
"It is hard for a woman to get her living nowadays," Philip answered, thoughtfully—"a young woman too, and a foreigner, as you may say. A girl's keep costs next to nothing. ”

“ She does not ask me to do much for the girl—not to adopt her or maintain her in a life of idleness—only to put her into some way of making an honest living and to keep her from falling into dangerous hands. ”

“ Mary said, in explanation of this arrangement. "He is obliged to be at the newspaper office every night."
And then she went on to tell how grateful her father was for his goodness, and how glad he should be to have any opportunity of thanking him in person, which kind of demonstration Philip Rayner, who was by reason of his lonely habits one of the shyest of men, was religiously determined to escape. If he had not been secure of finding Mary alone of an evening, his visits to Belvidere street would have speedily ceased. ”

“ He thought it rather a hard thing that his father had not a fine country-house, with gardens and hothouses stabling and billiard-room, like other men in his position; but whenever he ventured to argue the point with the old gentleman, he ended by agreeing with his parent that it was a foolish thing for a man to waste all his substance on splendor and show, and to be obliged to face the bankruptcy court in his old age.
"When I die, you will he one of the richest men in the leather trade, Phil," the old man usually wound up by saying ”

“ There was a new atmosphere in the house, somehow and Philip felt the change keenly.
Perhaps at this time Mr. Rayner the younger did not care quite to much for the society of his chosen friend, George Tolson. It was midwinter, and there wan considerable excuse for the suspension of their evening rambles; but Philip felt that he was not treating his friend quite fairly, and in order to make some amends invited him home to dinner once or twice a week. The old man had no objection to his company ”