Vassall Morton Part 53

"You know what she is. A feeling once rooted in her mind does not loosen its hold. There are very few who comprehend her. Her character is so balanced and so harmonious, so quiet and noiseless in its movement, that no one suspects the force, and faith, and energy that are in it. It is not in words or in looks that she shows herself. It is in action, in emergencies, that she declares her power over herself and over others."

Morton's pa.s.sion glowed upon him with all its early fervor.

"I will tell her what you wish. But her cup is full already, and you can hardly be willing to shake it to overflowing. It is impossible that her father should linger many days more; and when that is over, it will bring her a relief, though she may not think it so, in more ways than one."

Morton a.s.sented to his friend's reasons, and leaving his farewell for Edith Leslie, mournfully took his leave.

CHAPTER LXVIII.

Grief and patience, rooted in her both, Mingle their spurs together.--_Cymbeline_.

Leslie was dead; beyond the reach of wounds and sorrow; and the only tie which held his daughter to Vinal was at last broken. She left him, as she had promised, and made her abode with Mrs. Ashland, in her cottage by the sea sh.o.r.e.

She sat alone at an open window, looking out upon the sea, an illimitable dreariness, waveless and dull as tarnished lead; clouded with sullen mists, but still rocking in long, dead swells with the motion of a past storm.

Her thoughts followed on the track of the absent Morton.

"It is best for you to have gone; to have made for yourself a relief in your man's element of action and struggle. Such a change is happiness, after the misery you have known. It was a bitter schooling; a long siege, and a dreary one; but you have triumphed, and you wear its trophy,--the heroic calm, the mind tranquil with consciousness of power. You have wrung a proud tribute out of sorrow; but has it yielded you all its treasure? Could you but have rested less loftily on your own firm resolve and unbending pride of manhood! Could you but have learned that gentler, deeper, higher philosophy which builds for itself a temple out of ruin, and makes weakness invincible with binding its tendrils to the rock!

"Your fate and mine have not been a bed of roses; but the fierceness of yours is past, and I must still wait the issues of mine. I have renounced this fraud and mockery of empty words which was to have bound me to a life-long horror. The world will think very strangely of me. That must be borne, too; and such a load is light, to the burden I have borne already."

A few days later, tidings came that Vinal was ill. Edith Leslie rejoined him; but, finding that her presence was any thing but soothing to him, she left him in the care of others, and returned to her friend's house. It was but a sudden and short attack, from which he recovered in a week or two.

CHAPTER LXIX.

_Fal._--Reason, you rogue, reason; thinkest thou I'll endanger my soul gratis?--_Merry Wives of Windsor_.

_Pistol._--Base is the slave that pays.--_Henry V_.

Time had been when, his youth considered, Vinal was a beaming star in the commercial heaven. On 'change,

"His name was great, In mouths of wisest censure."

The astutest broker p.r.o.nounced him good; the sagest money lender took his paper without a question. But of late, his signature had lost a little of its efficacy. It was whispered that he was not as sound as his repute gave out; that his operations were no longer marked by his former clear-headed forecast; that he was deep in doubtful and dangerous speculation. In short, his credit stood by no means where it had stood a twelvemonth earlier.

Possibly these rumors took their first impulse, not on 'change, but at tea tables, and in drawing rooms. His wife's separation from him had given ample food to speculation; and gossip had for once been just, a.s.serting, with few dissenting voices, that there must needs be some fault, and a grave one, on the part of Vinal. The event had ceased to be a very recent one; but surmise was still rife concerning its mysterious cause.

Meanwhile, Vinal was being goaded into recklessness, frightened out of his propriety, haunted, devil-driven, maddened into desperate courses.

Late one night, he was pacing his library, with a quick, disordered step. His servants were in their beds, excepting a man, nodding his drowsy vigil over the kitchen fire. Vinal's affairs were fast drawing to a crisis. A few weeks must determine the success or failure of a broad scheme of fraud, on which he had staked his fortunes and himself, and whose issues would sink him to disgrace and ruin, or lift him for a time to the pinnacle of a knave's prosperity. But, meanwhile, how to keep his head above water! Claims thickened upon him; he was meshed in a network of perplexities; and, with him, bankruptcy would involve far more than a loss of fortune.

There was a ring at the door bell. Vinal stopped short in his feverish walk, raised his head with a startled motion, and listened like a fox who hears the hounds. His instinct foreboded the worst. His cheek flushed, and his eye brightened, not with spirit, but with desperation.

The bell rang again. This time, the sleepy servant roused himself.

Vinal heard his step along the hall; heard the opening of the street door, and a man's voice p.r.o.nouncing his name. The moment after, his evil spirit stood before him, in the shape of Henry Speyer.

Vinal gave him no time to speak, but shutting the door in the servant's face, turned upon his visitor with such courage as a cat will show when a bulldog has driven her into a corner.

"Again! Are you here again? It is hardly a month since you were here last. What have you done with what I gave you then? Do you think I am made of gold? Do you take me for a bank that you can draw on at will?"

"I am sorry to trouble you so soon, but I am very hard pressed."

"Hard pressed! So am I hard pressed. Here for a year and more I have been supporting you in your extravagance--you and your mistresses; you have been living on me like princes,--dress, drinking, feasting, horses, gambling!--among you, you make my money spin away like water.

Every well has a bottom to it, and you have got to the bottom of mine."

Speyer laughed with savage incredulity.

"Any thing in reason I am ready to do for you; but it's of no use.

More! more! is always the word. You think you have found a gold mine.

You mistake. Here I have a note due to-morrow; and another on Monday--that was for money I borrowed to give you. Heaven knows how I shall pay them. Go back, and come again a month from this."

"It won't do. I must have it now."

"I tell you, I have none to give you."

"Do you see this?" said Speyer, producing a roll of printed papers, and giving one to Vinal.

It was Vinal's letter, in the form of a placard, with a statement of the whole affair prefixed. Speyer had had it printed secretly in New York, the names of Morton and Vinal being left blank, and ingeniously filled in by himself with a pen.

"Give me the money, or show me how to get it, or I will have you posted up at every street corner in town. I have your letter here. I shall send it to your friend, the editor of the Sink."

The Sink was a scurrilous newspaper, which the virtuous Vinal, always anxious for the morals of the city, had once caused to be prosecuted as a nuisance, for which the editor bore him a special grudge.

But Vinal at last was brought to bay. Threats, which Speyer thought irresistible, had lost their power. He threw back the paper, and said desperately, "Do what you will."

Speyer made a step forward, and faced his prey.

"Will you give me the money?"

"By G--, no!"

"By G--, you shall!"

And Speyer seized him by the breast of his waistcoat.

Vinal had been trained in the habits of a gentleman. He had never known personal outrage before. He grew purple with rage. The veins of his forehead swelled like whipcord, and his eyes glittered like a rattlesnake's.

"Take off your hand!"

The words were less articulated than hissed between his teeth.