8 Lost For A Woman

HE is gone! They do not hear from him for two weeks, and long days before that the marriage is an accomplished fact. He sends a copy of the Herald containing the marriage notice heavily inked, and a lengthy letter petitioning forgiveness—a long pean of praise of his beauteous bride. He calls her an actress—he wants to let them down gently, and come to the circus and the trapeze by degrees. It matters not—were she a queen of tragedy as stainless as some queens of tragedy have been, it would still matter not. Utter ruin he’s befallen, disgrace so deep that no condoning can be possible. He might have died in these gallant and golden days of his youth, and their hearts might have broken, but still broken proudly, and his memory been cherished as the one beautiful and perfect thing of earth—too perfect to last. That radiant memory would have consoled. Now there can be nothing of this. Blank ruin, utter misery, deepest shame, covers them as a garment—it is in their hearts to curse him in the first frenzy of woe. He is worse than dead, a thousand times worse. They burn his portrait, they erase his name from the family Bible, they hang from sight and existence everything that ever belonged to him, they tear his letters to atoms-they would cover their heads with ashes, and wear sackcloth if it could help them to forget. Their hearts go in sackcloth and ashes, all the rest of their lives. The world of Toronto is stirred to its deepest depths; it is more than a nine-days’ wonder—it is whispered with bated breath, and awe-stricken faces, in very patrician families indeed, for many and many a day.

And so George Valentine gives the world for love, and his place knows him no more.

His father and mother live, and bear their misery and shame, and after the first blow, show a brave front to the world. It is in their nature. · They hold themselves more defiantly erect if possible, but he would be a brave man who would venture to name their son to either of them. And years go by, and richer and still richer Austin Valentine grows, and Sir Rupert writes from Nice in a despondent strain, that he is breaking fast, and that the actress stands a chance of writing herself Lady Valentine all too soon. Lady Valentine she may be curse her! Austin Valentine mutters; for he, too, is a broken man, but never heir to his millions. He bethinks him all at once of a youthful cousin, also a Valentine, half forgotten until now, very poor, and living in a remote part of Cornwall, and sends for him at once, with the assurance that if he pleases him he shall be, his heir.

Vane Valentine comes, wondering, and hardly able to realize his fairy future. He has been brought up in poverty and obscurity—has never expected anything else. Three lives stand between him and the baronetcy, Sir Rupert, Austin, George—what chance has he? Takeaway these three lives and give him the title—what is there for him to keep it up on? No, Vane Valentine has hoped for nothing, and Fate thrusts fortune in a moment into his hands.

He comes—a slim, dark youth of twenty, with good manners, and not much to say for himself. A little stiff and formal, his uncle (so he is told to term Mr. Austin Valentine) finds him—a contrast in all ways to the heir who is lost. All the better for that, perhaps; no chance trick of resemblance will ever make their hearts bleed. It is a young man this, who will never do a foolish or a generous, or a reckless, or an unselfish thing; who will weigh well the name and status of the lady he marries; whose heart will never run away with his head.

“The heart of a cucumber fried in show,” quotes, contemptuously, Madam Valentine. “We need not be afraid of him. What a pompous young prig the little fool is!”

But Vane Valentine never dreams of the estimate these rich relations of his hold him in. He thinks exceedingly well of himself, and infers, with the complacent simplicity of extreme conceit, that all the world does the same. The Valentine blue blood runs in his calm veins, his manners and morals are of the best, his temper well under control, his taste in dress verging on perfection, his health good without being vulgarly robust, his education leaves nothing to be desired—what more will you?

He accepts with complacent ease the golden showers Fortune rains upon him, does not oppress his benefactress with ,words of gratitude, feels that Destiny has come to a sense of her duty, and that the “king has got his own again.”

He writes long letters to Cornwall to his sister Dorothea, who has trained him since the death of his parents in early boyhood, and to a certain Cousin Camilla, of whom he is very fond, and whose picture he wears in a locket.

And Austin and Katherine Valentine accept him for what he is, and make the most of him; and all the time the aching void is there in their hearts, and aches and aches wearily the long year round.

Mr. Valentine visibly droops, breaks, retires from business, and begins that other business in whose performance we must all one day engage—the business of dying.

The name of the lost idol is never spoken between this father and mother. If the waters of Lethe were no fable, they would drink of it greedily, and so forget. But they remember only the more, perhaps, for this unbroken silence.

Six months after the arrival of Vane Valentine—his twentieth birthday occurs, and for the first time since the thunderbolt had riven their hearts, a party is given at Valentine House, in honor of the occasion. It is a dinner party, to which, in addition to the young people invited to meet the heir, many very great personages are bidden and come. It is a dinner party that Mrs. Tinker, for one, never forgets. Something occurs that night that is marked with a white stone forever after in her life.

No one has mourned the lost heir more deeply, more despairingly than she. Hers is gentler’ grief than that of the parents; it is unmixed with anger or bitterness her tears flow at first in ceaseless streams.

She has loved her boy almost as dearly as his own mother, only with a love that has in it no pride, no baser alloy with its pure metal. She has loved and she has lost.

She is a stout, unromantic-looking old woman, but to love and lose is as bitter to her faithful heart, it may be, as though she were a slim, sentimental maid of sixteen.

Her handsome Master George, her bonny boy, the apple of her eye and the pride of her life—what was the world without him! And on this night of the birthday fête some bitter drops rain from the royal old eyes at the thought of the days and the heir forever gone.

She has resented the coming of this young usurper from the first, but she has resented in silence, of course—she has never liked him, she would feel it as treason to her lost darling to like him even if he were likeable.

But he is not, he is black-a-vised, he is ‘aughty, he has a nasty, stiff way with servants, he is stingy, he loves money.

Yes he loves money Mrs. Tinker decides with disgust, he has been brought up to count every penny he spends, and he counts them yet. He will not let himself lack for anything, but he never gives away, he never throws a beggar a penny, nor a servant a tip. He is profuse in his “Aw-thanks,” but this politeness is the only thing about him he is lavish of.

So on this night of the dinner party, when Mr. Vane is twenty, and all the city is called upon to feast and rejoice, Mrs. Tinker sits in her own comfortable little room, and wipes her eyes and her glasses, and looks at the fire, and shakes her head, and is dismally retrospective.

It is a March night, and the wildest of its kind. It is late in the month, and March is going out like a lion, roaring like Bottom, the weaver, “so that it would do any man’s heart good to hear him.”

It might, if the man were seated like Susan Tinker at a cheery coal fire, a cup of tea and a plate of buttered toast at her elbow, but if he were breasting the elemental war, as was the man who slowly made his way to a side entrance of the great house—it also might not.

A tall man, in a rough great-coat, and fur cap, striding along in the teeth of the wind and sleet, over the slippery city pavements, and who rang the bell of the side door, and shrunk back into the shadow as it was answered.

One of the men-servants opened it, and peered into the wild blackness of the night.

“Well, my man,” he said, espying the tall, dark shadow,” and what may you want, you know?”

“I want to see Mrs. Tinker. She lives here, doesn’t she?” the shadow replied.

“Well she do,” the footman admits, leisurely ; “but whether she’ll want to see you—what’s your business, my good fellar?”

“My business is with Mrs. Tinker. Just go and tell her I have a message for her I think she will be glad to hear— my good fellar!” in excellent imitation of the pompous tone of Plush. “And look sharp, will you? It is not exactly a balmy evening in June.”

“Well, it’s not,” says Plush, reflecting as if that fact strikes him now for the first time. “I’ll tell her,” and goes.

The shadow leans wearily against the door and waits. Dinner is over above stairs, and music, and coffee, and conversation are on. Some lines he has read, somewhere, long before, and forgotten until this moment, start up in his mind, as he stands and looks with tired, haggard eyes, up at these gleaming and lace-draped windows.

“I note the flow of the weary years
Like the flow of this flowing river,
But dead in my heart are its hopes and fears
Forever and forever!
For never a light in the distance gleams,
No eye looks out for the rover,
Oh! sweet be your sleep, love, sweet be your dreams
Under the blossoming clover,
The sweet-scented, bee-haunted clover!”

A strange, sudden pang rends his heart.

“Oh, God !” he, cries out, “am I indeed forgotten! They feast and make merry, and I—well, I have earned it all. Even my mother—but mothers forget too, when their hearts are wrung and broken, and she had always more pride than love. And through both her love and pride, I stabbed her. Forgotten! What other fate have I deserved than to be forgotten!”

“You wanted me, my friend?” says a gentle voice, a dear old voice he remembers well, and a sob rises in his throat as he hears it again after long years. He looks from under the visor of his fur cap, and sees Mrs. Tinker. She is alone, the tall, plush young man has been summoned to upper spheres. No one is near. He takes a step forward.

“Hush!” he says; ” do not be alarmed—do not scream. Look at me—have you, too, forgotten me, Mrs. Tinker?”

He lifts his fur cap; the gas-flare falls upon his face. Forgotten him! Oh! never, never, never! She clasps her hands, there is a wordless, sobbing sound, not scream. She stands with dilated eyes, and joy—joy unutterable, making the old face beautiful.”

‘Dear old friend, yes, I see you remember. It is your scapegrace—your runaway ‘Master Georgie’ comeback.”

“Oh, my dear, my dear, my dear!” is all Mrs. Tinker can say. And now down the wrinkled cheeks tears roll—tears of joy beyond all words. “Oh! my own boy! My own boy—my own dear, dear; dearest Master George!”

He takes the old hand, wrinkled, toil-worn, and kisses it.

“Always my friend—my true, good, loyal old friend! Thank God some one remembers me. It is more than I deserve though—more than I ever expected.”

“Oh, my own love! my own dear, brave, bright beautiful boy! don’t ‘ee talk like that! Don’t ‘ee, now it do nigh break my heart. Oh, Master George! Master George! I’m fit to die wi’ joy. I know’d you’d comeback to see the mother some day—I always said so. Thanks and praise be! But come in, come in. It’s your own house, and I’m keepin’ you here.”

“My own house, Mrs. Tinker!” he says, with a dreary laugh. “My good soul, I have not a garret in the world I can call my own.”

But he lets her—lead him in, and shivers as he passes out of the bleak, sleety night.

“Oh, my dear, how wet you are! and how pale, and thin, and fagged-like, now that I see you in the light! My dear, my dear, my own Master George! how changed you are!”

“Changed!” he says. “Good Heavens, yes! If you knew the life I have led—But we cannot stand talking here—some of the servants will be passing, and I must not be seen. Take me somewhere where we can talk undisturbed, and where I may get warm; I am chilled to the bone.”

Her eyes are running over again. The change in him! Oh, the change in him!—so worn, so jaded, so hollow-eyed, so poorly-clad, so utterly fallen from his high estate!

She leads the way to her little sitting-room, and he sinks wearily into the easy-chair she places for him before the fire, and places his hand over his eyes, as if the leaping, cheery light dazzled and blinded him.

“Sit thee there, Master George, and don’t ‘ee talk fora bit. Rest and get warm, and I’ll go and fetch summat to eat.”

He is well disposed to obey; he is worn out in body and mind. He has been recently ill, he has eaten scarcely anything all day, he has hardly a penny in his pocket, and “the world is all before him where to choose.”

He sits, and half sleeps, so’ utterly weary is he, so sweet to him are the rest, and the warmth of the fire. But he wakes up as Mrs. Tinker returns laden with hot coffee, chicken, meats, bread and wine. His eyes light with the gladness of hard, grinding hunger.

“Thanks, my dear old woman! you have not forgotten my tastes. By Jove! I am glad you brought me something, for I am uncommonly sharp-set.”

She watches him eating and drinking, with the keen delight women feel in ministering to the bodily wants of men they love. He pushes the things away at last, and laughs at her rapt look.

“I wonder if Ne’er-do-well ever had such a loving cling to him before,” he says : “the world is a better place, Mrs. Tinker, for having such women as you in it. I wonder if I might smoke in this matronly bower without desecration now?”

It is an anti-climax, but it does Mrs. Tinker’s heart good. Smoke! Yes, from now until sunrise if he likes.

“Well, not quite so long as that. By sunrise I expect that I and the Belle O’Brien will Be well on our way to —-, but never mind where—if you don’t know you can’t tell. I’ve a berth as foremast hand, being a friend—after a fashion—of the captain’s, and am going to work my passage out to—never mind where again, Mrs. Tinker. If I live and prosper, and redeem the past out there, I’ll come back and see you one day, and make a clean breast of it. If not—and it is more than likely not—I will have seen you to-night at least. But I’m off in an hour or two, and that is why I am here—to take away with me a last look of your good, plump, motherly face—bless it! Because, you see, in the words of the song, ‘it may be for years, and it may be forever.’ And very likely it will be forever, for I’m an unlucky beggar, and like Mrs. Gummidge, ‘thinks go contrary with me!’ ”

He laughs; it is almost like the mellow laugh of old, but it makes faithful Susan Tinker’s heart ache.

“Oh, my dear! my dear! You a sailor? You ·in want of anything, and him—that there young hupstart—-”

“Ah! I know about that,” George says, quickly, ” I heard down yonder in the town. It is his birthday, and there are highjinks in consequence up-stairs. What’s he like—this successor of mine!”

He’s black and stiff, and that high-stomached, and proud of himself that I can’t abide the sight of him! He’s not fit to black your shoes, that he ain’t, Master George. Oh! my dear, it’s not too late to come back and do well. Let me go up and tell my mistress—-”

But he stops her with a motion of his hand.

“No, Tinker, you shall tell no one. I have not returned to whine and beg. Not that I would not go down on my knees, mind you, to crave their pardon for the heart-break I have caused them if that were all. But it would not be all—it would be misunderstood. I might be repulsed, and—I know myself—that might awake the devil within me. I would be thought to have returned for the money—a comfortable home l could not stand that. I wrote again and again that first year to ask their forgiveness I never asked, nor meant to ask for anything besides, and they never answered me. A man can’ t go on doing that sort of thing forever. Some day—months from this—you will tell them if you like, and if you think they would care to hear. Tell my mother I ask her pardon with all my soul; tell her I love her with all my heart. Tell her I would give my life—ay, twice over, to undo the past. But tell her nothing to-night. I was homesick, Mrs. Tinker; I wanted to see you—I really think I wanted to see you most of all. Think of that—a fellow being in love with you, and you—fifty-five, isn’t it?”

He laughs again, but the dark bright eyes that look at the fire see it dimly, as if through water. In the pause comes the sound of singing from up-stairs—a man’s voice—a tenor, tolerably strong and tuneful, but Mrs. Tinker listens with a look of much distaste, and makes a face, as though she were tasting something very nasty indeed.”

“It’s him!” she says, in explanation, and George smiles; he knows she means Vane Valentine.

” ‘Le roi est mort—vive le roi’, is evidently not your motto, you foolish old person,” he remarks; “don’t you know a live dog is better than a dead lion? Be wise—in your advancing years, my dear old nurse, and cultivate Mr. Vane Valentine. He is to be a baronet and a millionaire, and a very great personage one day, let me tell you.”

He rises, puts his pipe in his pocket, and stretches out his hand for his hat. She rises, too, with a sort of cry.

“Not going! Not like this! Oh, Master George, dear Master George, not like this!”

“Like this, my friend. See! I am weak as water already—don’t unman me altogether—don’t make it harder for me than you can help. It must be. I have seen you,and I am satisfied. Tell them by and by—-”

He stops, for she is crying as if her very heart would break.

“Ah, me! ah, me!”, she sobs, “how shall I bear it? How can I ever let him go? Master George, Master George! Oh, my boy, that I have rocked in these arms many and many a time—that has gone to sleep on my breast, that I love like my own flesh and blood! Oh, my heart, how will I let him go ?”

She cries so dreadfully that he puts down his hat and takes her in his arms, and tries to soothe her. His own eyes are wet. She cries as if indeed her old heart were breaking.

“I must go,” he says, at last, almost wildly. “My dear, dear nurse, have a little mercy! Stop crying, for Heaven’s sake! I can’t stand this.”

There is such desperate trouble in his tone, in his face, that it pierces through all her sorrow, and checks its flow for a moment. In the moment he snatches up his hat.

“Good-by, good-by!” he exclaims. ” God bless you, faithful, loving old friend. I’ll come back to see you if I never come to see any one else.”

And then he is gone. There comes floating down the stairs the last melodious words of Vane Valentine’s hunting song, as the door opens.

For the fences run Strong in the Leicestershire vale,
And there’s bellows to mend , and a lengthening tail,
With a ‘Forward! Away!’ in the morning.”

But there mingles with it a quick step running down the stairs, and the opening and shutting of a street door. And then she is alone, and outside the sleet is beating against the glass, and the wind is shrieking through the black streets, and up-stairs there is the sound of faint applause, and a soft murmur of pleasant voices. And George Valentine has been, and is gone.

The dinner party goes off well, and so does the new heir. People admire his repose of manner and modest good breeding, and consider him a credit to his sister’s training.

Mrs. Tinker is indisposed next day, and keeps her bed. Her eyes are very red, her face very pale and troubled, her mistress observes, when she visits her. Being questioned as to these symptoms, Mrs. Tinker turns her face to the wall, and her tears silently flow again. If she only knew!

The storm continues all night, all next day; there are many disasters and wrecks along the coast chronicled in the papers for days after. And among them there is narrated the total wreck of the bark Belle O’Brien, and the loss of every soul on board.

This item of shipping news is read aloud below stairs by the butler, and that magnate is electrified by a shriek from one of the women, who drops in a dead faint. It is Mrs. Tinker, to the surprise of every one; and Mrs. Tinker is laid on the floor, and sprinkled with water, and slapped on the palms, and brought to with infinite difficulty. And when she is brought to, she “goes on” like a mad woman, beating the air with her hands, screaming hysterical screams, calling out for her mistress, and misconducting herself generally in a way perfectly frenzied.

Her mistress comes; every one else is turned out of the room, and then—Susan Tinker never knows how—the terrible truth is told. George Valentine is one of the “hands” who has gone down to his death in the ill-fated Belle O’Brien.

Blood tells, pride tells, training tells. Madam listens, with blanched cheeks and wide, horror-stricken eyes, but she neither faints nor screams. She is deadly still, deadly cold; but almost the calmness of death, too, is in her face. She makes no comment whatever; she listens to the end—to the narrative of the visit and all that passed—and rises and seeks out her husband.

He comes in horror to the old servant’s bedside, his hands trembling, his mouth twitching, far more agitated, in seeming, than his wife, and listens to the story sobbed out again between ever-flowing tears.

“You—you did not ask him anything about—about her?” the father says, tremulously.

“No; I forgot. There wasn’t time to ask him anything. And I was so took up with him,” Mrs. Tinker sobs.

She understands Mr. Valentine refers to the wife.

“Oh, my dear master, you are not angry with me, are you?”

“You should have spoken sooner—that night,” he says, still tremulously; “all—all might have been well.” Then he breaks down for a moment, and lays his head on the table, and Susan Tinker is silent before a grief greater and more sacred than her own. “But I am not angry,” he adds, rising slowly. “You did as he told you. I am not angry with you, Mrs. Tinker,” he says, with strange pathos and gentleness for that stern, proud man. “George loved you!”

It is the first time that name has passed his lips for years. As he speaks it he turns and hurries out of the room.

He goes to the little sea-coast village where the bones of the luckless bark rest, and the crew—such of them as have been washed ashore, lie buried. One or two of the bodies have been identified and claimed; others were cast up by the sea with every trace of humanity beaten out by the ruthless waves. The clothes and other relics are preserved. Among them is a jacket, and on the lining, which is black, there is marked in small distinct red letters, a name, “G. H. Valentine.” The body on which this garment, tightly buttoned, was found, was that of a tall young man with dark hair and a mustache; a fine looking, muscular young fellow, so far as could be discovered, after some days in the water. He is buried yonder. The father goes and kneels by the little mound of snow-covered sod, and what passes in his heart is known only to Heaven and himself.

Five months after that, Austin Valentine, the merchant prince, dies. He has never held up his head again; the sight of his heir becomes insupportable to him. That young gentleman is sent on his travels, and the funeral is over before he returns.

For Madam Valentine—well, she goes on with the burden of life somehow. It is an old story. “The heart may break, yet brokenly live on.” The world does not see much difference. Only the Toronto home is broken up forever; life there all at once grows hateful, and she becomes a wanderer. She will have no fixed place of abode, a singular restlessness possesses her—she resides here, there, everywhere, as the fancy seizes her. Vane Valentine waits dutifully on every whim. “What comfort he must be to you; such a good young man,” everybody says, and she agrees, and tries to think it is so—but he is a comfort to her. She has a cold sort of liking for him, a respect for his judgment and good sense, but love—Ah! well, she has loved once, and once suffices. And so existence goes on for still three years more. Mrs. Tinker accompanies her always; she clings to the old servant, she is a link that binds her to the past—the only one. She comes with Vane Valentine to the cottage in the suburbs of this dull little New England town of Clangville, because it is a pleasant place for a few autumn weeks, and one place is much the same as another.

Life goes on—almost stagnant in its quiet; she grows old gracefully; she is a woman of fine presence and commanding mien still, her health is unbroken, only she has almost forgotten to smile.

Her face is set like a flint to all the world; she is chill and hard, self-repressed and self-centered, a woman sufficient unto herself.

And here—where peace and a sort of forgetfulness seem to have found her, the widow of her dead son appears, the miserable, low-born cause of her life’s woe and loss, and destroys it all.

Comes with her fair mocking face, her fresh, insolent young beauty, her bold, evil blue eyes, her coarse, defiant taunts, and threatens to tear bare her half-healed heart, and show it bleeding to all the gaping world.

And this is the danger Vane Valentine has gone tonight to avert, this is the wretched story of passion and pain, and loss, and death, and shame, she thinks out, as she sits with clasped hands gazing at the cold, white October moonlight—all wrought by this one woman’s hand!