She and I Volume II Part 13

No. The servant who answered the door, when I timidly called for the third time at the house, told me that instructions had been given to say "not at home" always _to me_.

Pleasant!

War had been declared:--a "guerre a outrance," as I had antic.i.p.ated; but, it was a struggle in which I was stretched on the ground at my adversary's mercy, with her vengeful blade at my heart!

I then wrote to Min.

It was a long letter. I bewailed my hasty severance of the old relations between us, and asked her to have pity on my sad fate. I poured out all the flood of feeling which had deluged my breast since we had parted at the party. I begged, I implored her not to desert me at her mother's bidding.

My letter I posted, so that it should not be stopped en route, and returned to me unread by my darling, whom I asked to write to me, if only one line, to tell me that she had really received my appeal safely--requesting her, also, to reply to me at my office that I might get her answer in the soonest possible time.

I dreamt of her subsequently, the whole night through:--it was a horrible dream!

A third day of torture in my governmental mill. Six mortal hours more of dreary misery; and, helpless boredom at the hands of Smith, Brown, Jones, and Robinson!

And, then, I got my reply.

It was "only a line." Very short, very sweet, very bitter, very pointed; and yet, I value that little letter so highly that I would not exchange it for the world! The words are stained with tear-drops that, I know, fell from loving, grey eyes; while, its sense, though painful, is sweet to me from its outspoken truthfulness:--I value it so highly, that I could not deem it more precious, if it were written on a golden tablet in characters set with diamonds--were it the longest letter maiden ever wrote, the sweetest billet lover ever received!

"_Frank! I cannot, I must not grant your request. Do not wring my heart by writing to me again, or speaking to me; for, I have promised, and we are not to see each other any more. I am breaking my word in writing to you now, but, oh! do not think badly of me. Indeed, indeed, I am not heartless, Frank. It has not been my fault, believe me. I shall pray for you always, always! I must not say any more_.

"_Minnie Clyde_."

That was all the little note contained; but, it was quite enough.

Was it not?

When I had read it and read it, over and over again, I was almost beside myself,--with a grief that was mixed up with feelings of intense anger and rage against her whom I looked upon as the author of my sufferings-- Mrs Clyde.

Min had been again sent down to the country, the very day on which I received her heart-breaking letter. This I heard from my old friend, dear little Miss Pimpernell, who tried vainly to console me. She endeavoured to make me believe that "all would come right in the end,"

as she had prophesied before; but, I refused to be comforted. I could not share her faith. I would not be sanguine any more; no, never any more!

I saw Mrs Clyde at church the very next Sunday. I went there in the hope that my darling might have returned, and that I would see her--not from any religious feeling.

There was only her mother there, however.

I waited to accost her at the church door after the service was over.

"Oh, Mrs Clyde," I said, "do not be my enemy!"

But, she took no notice of me:--she cut me dead.

I was convinced that all was lost now.

It was of no use my longer attempting to fight against fate:--I gave up hope completely;--and then--and then--

I went to the devil!

Rochefoucauld says in his pointed "Maxims" that--

"There is nothing so catching as example; nor is there ever great good or ill done that does not produce its like. We imitate good actions through emulation, and bad ones through the malignity of our nature, which shame restrains and example emanc.i.p.ates."

That was my case now.

I suppose I had had it in me all along--the "black drop," as the Irish peasants call it, of evil; and, that shame had hitherto prevented me from plunging into the whirlpool of sinful indulgence that now drew me, a willing victim, down into its yawning gulf of ruin and degradation.

That bar removed, however, I made rapid progress towards the beckoning devil, who was waiting to receive me with open arms. I hastened along that path, "where,"--as Byron has described from his own painful experience--

"--In a moment, we may plunge our years In fatal penitence, and in the blight Of our own soul, turn all our blood to tears, And colour things to come with hues of night!"

I declare to you, that when I look back on this period of my life--life!

death, rather I should say, for it was a moral death--I am quite unable to comprehend the motives that led me to take such a course. My eyes were not blinded. I must have seen that each stride placed me further and further away from my darling, erecting a fresh obstacle between us; still, some irresistible impulse appeared to hurry me on--although, I could not but have known how vain it would be for me to recover my lost footsteps: how hard a matter to change my direction, and look upwards to light and happiness once more! Glancing back at this period--as I do now with horror--I cannot understand myself, I say.

I went from bad to worse, plunging deeper and deeper into every wickedness that Satan could suggest, or flesh hanker after--until I seemed to lose all sense of shame and self-reproach.

My connection with officialdom was soon terminated.

I got later and later in my attendance; so that, old Smudge's prediction was shortly fulfilled, for, I became no better than the rest, in respect of early hours.

One day the chief spoke to me on the subject, and I answered him unguardedly.

I was not thinking of him at the time, to tell the truth; and when he said, "Mr Lorton, late again, late again! This won't do, you know, won't do!" I quite forgot myself; and, in speaking to him, called him by the nickname under which he was known to us, instead of by his proper appellation.

"Very sorry, Smudge," said I, "very sorry; won't be so again, I promise you, sir!"

He nearly got a fit, I a.s.sure you; while, all the other fellows were splitting with laughter at my slip!

"Mr Lorton, I will report you, sir!" was all he said to me directly; but, as he shuffled off to his desk, with the attendance book recording my misdeeds under his arm and his face purple with pa.s.sion, we all could hear him muttering pretty loudly to himself. "Smudge! Smudge!"--he was repeating;--"I'll Smudge him, the impudent rascal! I wonder what the dooce he meant by it! What the dooce did he mean by it?--mean by it?"

I begged his pardon off-hand, immediately, of course, although I would not give him the written apology he peremptorily demanded.

Do you know, I did not like to deprive him of the extreme pleasure it would give him to submit his case against me--in clerkly, cut-and-dried statement--to the chief commissioner, under-secretary, first lord, or whoever else occupied the lofty pedestal of "the board," that controlled the occasionally-peculiar proceedings of the Obstructor General's Department.

I knew with what intense relish he would expatiate on the wrong which "the service" had sustained in his person at my hands--the "frightful example" I presented, of insubordination and defiance to const.i.tutional authority; and how, he would draw up the most elaborate doc.u.ment, detailing all this, in flowing but strictly official language, on carefully-folded, quarter-margined foolscap, of the regular, authorised dimensions!

What a pity, I thought, it would be to interfere with such neat arrangements by submitting to a _Nolle Prosequi_--as I would have done, had I tendered the recantation of my error that he insisted on!

At the same time, however, I checkmated his triumph, by forwarding to the people in high places the resignation of that position as a clerk of the tertiary formation, which I had, been nominated to, examined in respect of, and competed for, under the auspices of Her Majesty's Polite Letter Writer Commissioners; and which I had been duly appointed to--all in proper official sequence--but one short year before, plus a few additional months, which were of no great consequence to any one.

My withdrawal left, at any rate, one place vacant for some member of Parliament's const.i.tuent's son, who would, probably, be much more worthy in every way for the honours and duties of the situation--which, really, I do not think I ever estimated at their proper value!

This was some satisfaction to me, I a.s.sure you; and, combined with the sum of one hundred and ten pounds sterling--less income-tax on one- fourth part of the said amount, or thereabouts: I like to be correct-- was all the benefit I ever received from my connection with "Government."

My year's probation was, I may say without any great exaggeration, thrown away; for, the knowledge I gained was not of a character to advance my interests in any other walk in life, professional or mercantile. Still, I bear no malice to officialdom, if officialdom cares to obtain my a.s.surance to that effect. The few words--far between, too--which I have dropped to you, anent the combination of the ill-used servants of the country in opposition to their grievances, have been more intended to redress the wrongs of those hard-worked, poor-paid sufferers in question, than meant as a covert attack on the n.o.ble authorities of the great, lumbering inst.i.tution they belong to--the spokes of whose broadly-tired wheels they may be said to form.

For my part, I adore governmental departments, looking on all of them with a wide admiration that is tempered with wholesome awe; and, believing them to be so many concentrations of virtue and merit, which are none the less real because they are imperceptible.

The giving up of my appointment was the finish of my mad career.

I awoke now to a consciousness of all my foolishness and wickedness; the revelation of the misery, present and future alike, which my conduct had prepared for me, coming to mind, with a sudden, sharp stroke of painful distinctness that prostrated me into an abyss of self-torture and repentance.